PR 



•r'^'^fe 






:i---;-' 



'K;'<f 




Qass f.R3EM 

Book ^^^ 

Copyriglit]^'* 



COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






\:. 








Facsimile of Milton's Dim 



\\ --^ '\ 









/^. 






DKD M.S. LVCIDAS, I42-I5I. 



GATEWAY SERIES 



MILTON'S 
MINOR POEMS 

EDITED BY 

MARY A. JORDAN, A.M. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, SMITH COLLEGE 




NEW YOTkK •:• CINCT^•i^y,ltI ri'^mCAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



^t^^^l^ 



LIBRARY of CpNGRESp. 

Two Copies* Received 

JUN 2 1904 

ODyrleht Entry 

CLASS a. XXo. Na 

COPY B 



^' 



Copyright, 1904, by 
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



Milton's minor poems. 
W. P. I 



OF ENGLISH TEXTS 



GENERAL EDITOR 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



THE GATEWAY SERIES, 

HENRY VAN DYKE, General Editor. 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Professor Felix E. 

Schelling, University of Pennsylvania. 
Shakespeare's Julius C^sar. Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 

"The Outlook." 
Shakespeare's Macbeth. Professor T. M. Parrott, Prince- 
ton University. 
Milton's Minor Poems. Professor Mary A. Jordan, Smith 

College, 
Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Professor 

C. T. Winchester, Wesleyan University. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Professor James A. 

Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Professor William 

MacDonald, Brown University, 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Professor George 

E. Woodberry, Columbia University. 
Scott's Ivanhoe. Professor Francis H. Stoddard, New 

York University. 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. Professor R, M. Alden, Leland 

Stanford Jr. University. 
iRViNG's Life of Goldsmith. Professor Martin Wright 

Sampson, Indiana University. 
Macaulay's Milton. Rev. E. L. Gulick, Lawrenceville 

School. 
Macaulay's Addison. Professor Charles F. McClumpha, 

University of Minnesota. 
Macaul/vy'S Life of Johnson. Professor J. S. Clark, North- 
western University. 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Professor Edwin Mims, Trin- 
ity College, North Carolina. 
George Eliot's Silas Marner. Professor W. L. Cross, 

Yale University. 
Tennyson's Princess. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, 

Wellesley College. 
Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and 

Elaine, and The Passing of Arthur. Henry van 

Dyke. 



PREFACE BY THE GENERAL 
EDITOR 

This series of books aims, first, to give the English 
texts required for entrance to college in a form which 
shall make them clear, interesting, and helpful to those 
who are beginning the study of literature ; and, second, 
to supply the knowledge which the student needs to 
pass the entrance examination. For these two reasons 
it is called The Gateivay Series. 

The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small 
volumes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, 
which were written to be read and enjoyed, not to be 
parsed and scanned and pulled to pieces. A short life 
of the author is given, and a portrait, in order to help 
the student to know the real person who wrote the 
book. The introduction tells what it is about, and 
how it was written, and where the author got the idea, 
and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page 
are simply to give the sense of the hard words so that 
the student can read straight on without turning to a 
dictionary. The other notes, at the end of the book, 
explain difficulties and allusions and fine points. 

5 



6 Preface by the General Editor 

The editors are chosen because of their thorough 
training and . special fitness to deal with the books 
committed to them, and because they agree with this 
idea of what a Gateway Series ought to be. They 
express, in each case, their own views of the books 
which they edit. Simplicity, thoroughness, shortness, 
and clearness, — these, we hope, will be the marks of 
the series. 

HENRY VAN DYKE. 



PREFACE 

Doctor Henry van Dyke, the editor-in-chief of the 
Gateway Series, has recently put into suggestive and 
trenchant words the two principal ends which this 
volume tries to secure for the student of English. He 
says to the young friend going away from home to get 
an education : " A good many years ago I did what you 
are doing now. Since then things have changed a 
little in our American schools and colleges. The term 
opens later in the fall and closes earlier in the summer. 
Students' rooms are finer and warmer. ' Entrance re- 
quirements ' are larger and stiffer. Tallow candles 
have gone out, electric lights have come in, and even 
kerosene oil has been refined to astral brilliancy. You 
are going to have more teachers, more elective courses, 
more expenses, more athletic trainers, more ' modern 
advantages,' including probably more kinds of food 
than I had. But, after all, these changes do not make 
any real difference in the meaning of the fact that you 
are going away from home to get an education. Your 
outfit may be better than mine, and the road may be 
a bit smoother, but you are starting on the same jour- 
ney, and you have to face the same question. What 
goal are you going to make for, and how are you going 
to travel, straight or crooked? To answer this ques- 

1 



8 Preface 

tion rightly, you must, first of all, remember that you 
are now a member of a privileged class. . . . 

" Your studies . . . will be of two kinds : those that 
you like and those that you dislike. Use the former 
to develop your natural gifts, and the latter to correct 
your natural defects. There is a great difference in 
minds. Some are first-class, some are second-class, 
and so on. You can never tell what kind of a mind 
you have unless you test it thoroughly by hard work." 

This volume has been prepared in the hope that it 
may help to fit young students for membership in a 
privileged class by supplying the hard work necessary 
to test and train their minds, and by affording the 
opportunity for both kinds of study, — that which 
develops natural gifts as well as that which corrects 
natural defects. For it is hardly to be expected that 
any young reader will like all of Milton. It is greatly 
to be deplored if the young student likes none of Mil- 
ton. Some effort is clearly necessary to secure justice 
for both aspects of Milton's work, — the beautiful and 
the imposing. 

To this end, the explanatory notes and the refer- 
ences to such reading as Milton is known to have done 
have been made as full as the space at hand would 
permit. For some teachers and for many students 
such a volume as this must take the place of diction- 
aries and classic authors. A definite effort has been 
made to direct the reader's attention to the structure 
of Milton's verse and to the characteristics and sources 



Preface 9 

of his diction as well as to his habits of composition. 
It is believed that such study will increase the reader's 
pleasure in the work and the worker, and lead to deeper 
reverence for genius by making clearer its working, 
whether its laws and explanation are fully attained or 
not. No good teacher need fear to disgust the student 
worth teaching by laying bare the ways of inspiration 
or by supplying the detail necessary for full acquaint- 
ance with the subject studied. The love of knowledge 
that rejects the labour of knowing is not worth the 
name. Aristotle and the writer of Eccksiastes supple- 
ment each other and say the last word on education 
even to experts in child study and the management of 
the elective system. The one : "All men by nature are 
actuated with the desire of knowledge." The other: 
" And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wis- 
dom concerning all things that are done under heaven : 
this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to 
be exercised therewith." 

Obligation to previous students of Milton's life and 
works is a matter of course. The writer of this book 
has consulted them freely; used them, she believes, 
not slavishly, and she now records her gratitude to 
them for their labours of love and skill. A few passages 
overlooked by them or left in doubt she has been able 
to make clear. 



MARY A. JORDAN. 



Smith College, 
Northampton, Mass. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Introduction : 

I. Life of Milton 1 1 

II. L' Allegro, II Penseroso 40 

III. Arcades 42 

IV. Comus 47 

V. An Expostulation with Inigo Jones ... 49 

VI. Lycidas 53 

VII. The Story of the Text . . . . . .56 

Milton's Minor Poems: 

L'Allegro 65 

II Penseroso . Jl 

Arcades ,78 

Comus 83 

Lycidas 126 

.Notes 135 



10 




INTRODUCTION 

I. Life of Milton 

Edmund Spenser had been ten years dead and William 
Shakespeare had still about eight years longer to live 
when John Milton was born. The day was the 9th of 
December, 1608, and the place was his father's house, 
known as "The Spread Eagle," in Bread Street, Cheap- 
side, near St. Paul's, London. The maiden name of 
Milton's mother was Sarah Jeffrey. She seems to have 
had very little direct influence upon the poet's literary 
development, his account of her being that she was " a 
most excellent mother and particularly known for her 
charities through the neighbourhood." To his father, at 
every opportunity, Milton pays the tribute of affectionate 
gratitude and enthusiastic respect. The character of this 
father obviously deserved all that the son's eloquence 
could commemorate. In the first place, he was a man 
who had made his own way in London to " a plentiful 
estate," after he had been disinherited by his father, 
Richard Milton, one of the stanchest of Oxfordshire 
Roman Catholics, for becoming a Protestant. How this 
commercial success was accomplished is not known in 
detail ; for it was not until February, 1 599-1 600, when he 



12 Milton's Minor Poems 

was thirty-seven years old, and married to a wife of about 
twenty-eight, that he was duly quaUfied as a member of 
the Scriveners' Company and that he set up house and 
shop in Bread Street. At this time, a scrivener was 
much more than a mere scribe or legal copyist. He was 
a notary, one who did some of the less important work of 
an attorney, in drawing up wills, bonds, mortgages, in 
lending money and placing investments. Furthermore, 
this particular scrivener was a thoughtful and cultivated 
man, with a talent for music which gave him standing 
among the composers of his time. Certain aspects of 
his character and his relation to his son are best set forth 
in that son's own words : 

" My father destined me while yet a child to the study 
of polite Hterature, which I embraced with such avidity 
that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired 
to rest from my studies till midnight, which was the first 
source of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of 
which were added frequent headaches ; all of which not 
retarding my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to 
have me instructed daily both at school and by other 
masters at home." 

The first of John Milton's teachers was Thomas Young, 
a Puritan clergyman, of whom, in one of his Latin poems, 
Milton says that this master is dearer to him than was 
Socrates to Alcibiades, Aristotle to Alexander, or Chiron 
to Achilles. In his twelfth year he was sent as a day- 
scholar to St. Paul's School, near his father's home, but 
Young still continued to teach him. This prolonged 



Introduction 13 

service on the part of Young may have served as a re- 
Hef to the discipline supplied by the master of St. Paul's, 
Alexander Gill, who is described as " an ingeniose person, 
notwithstanding his humours, particularly his whipping 
fits." Of the master's son, another Alexander Gill, and 
usher in the school, Milton became an intimate friend. 
During the four or five years of his study at this time of 
his life, he made good progress in Greek and Latin, 
learned some Hebrew and, by his father's advice, studied 
French and Italian. His own account is : *' When I had 
acquired various tongues, and also some not insignificant 
taste for the sweetness of philosophy, he sent me to 
Cambridge." Besides his regular schooling, the young 
poet was trained by books and reading to a more liberal 
culture. The printer, Humphrey Lowndes, who also 
lived in Bread Street, lent him books of poetry, among 
them Spenser, and Du Bartas, translated by Sylvester. 
Another important influence in Milton's life at St. Paul's 
was his friendship with the young Italian, Charles 
Diodati, so often and so feelingly characterized in his 
letters and in his Latin Elegia Prima, Sexta, and Epi- 
taphium Damonis, While he was still a scholar in St. 
Paul's, his sister Anne, a year or two older than himself, 
married, in 1624, Mr. Edward Philhps, second clerk in the 
Crown office in Chancery, leaving John and his younger 
brother, Christopher, the only children at home in Bread 
Street. To the year of his sister's marriage belong the 
earliest preserved specimens of John Milton's verse. They 
are Paraphrases on Psalms cxiv and cxxxvi. This work. 



14 Milton's Minor Poems 

mechanical as it may seem to readers out of sympathy 
with the type of Hterature it represents, still gives clear 
evidence to the close observer of the pecuHar genius of 
Milton, of his habits of Hfe and of mind, and of that 
characteristic result of them all, his culture. It must be 
remembered that before he went to Cambridge he had 
probably *' ceaselessly studied " and " insatiably read " 
the books of " his day," what we now call contemporary 
literature ; Shakespeare's Coriolanus^ Sonnets, and Tempest^ 
Chapman's Iliad, J. Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, the 
King James Version of the Bible, Bacon's Novum Or- 
ganujn, Burton's Anatomy of Melaiicholy, and the First 
Folio of Shakespeare. Drummond, Drayton, and Wither 
had written poetry commanding attention, and the year 
after Milton entered college, the final form of Bacon's 
^j-j-^j'j appeared. All this justifies Edmond Scht^rer's asser- 
tion that " he belongs at once to the Renaissance and to 
Puritanism. The whole character of his work is explained 
by this double filiation. He is a poet, not of the great 
creative age, but of that age's morrow, — a morrow still 
possessed of spontaneity and conviction. Yet he is a 
didactic and theological poet, that is to say, the only 
kind of poet which it was possible for an English republi- 
can of the seventeenth century to be. . . . But also what 
a transition was that from the Renaissance to Puritanism ! 
And yet the one sprang from the other, for Puritanism is 
but Protestantism in an acute form, and Protestantism 
itself is but the Renaissance carried into the sphere of 
religion and theology." 



Introduction 15 

On the 1 2th of February, 1624-5, Milton was enrolled 
as a Lesser Pensioner on the books of Christ College, 
Cambridge. A pensioner in the University of Cambridge 
is one who pays for his commons and so corresponds to 
a commoner at Oxford. He was matriculated in the 
University, April 9, 1625. Here he hved and studied, 
with frequent absences in vacation and at other times, for 
seven years. His tutor to whom he was assigned was the 
Reverend William Chappell, later Bishop of Cork and 
Ross. Milton got on so ill with this tutor that the 
Master of the College, Dr. Thomas Bainbridge, had to 
interfere. Justice seems to have been done with an even 
hand, for Milton was sent, or withdrawn, from college 
in circumstances equivalent to rustication ; but he was 
allowed to return, and on his return was transferred to 
another tutor, Mr. Nathaniel Tovey. When Christopher 
Milton joined his brother at Christ's in 1 630-1, it was to 
Tovey that he was assigned. Milton took his bachelor's 
degree at th^ regular time in 1628-9, and the master's 
degree in July, 1632. Still this episode was not without 
its inconveniences ; for in later times of political and per- 
sonal controversy, it gave some show of occasion for the 
charge that he had been " vomited out " of the University 
for unbecoming conduct and indecorous life. Milton's 
treatment of the charge was as characteristic as the whole 
episode doubtless was. 

"It hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge 
publicly with all grateful mind the more than ordinary 
favour and respect which I found, above any of my 



1 6 Milton's Minor Poems 

equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, 
the Fellows of the College wherein I spent some years, 
who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the 
manner is, signified many ways how much better it would 
content them if I would stay, as by many letters full of 
kindness and loving respect, both before that time and 
long after, I was assured of their singular good affection 
toward me. . . . My father sent me to Cambridge ; 
there I devoted myself for a space of seven years to the 
literature and arts usually taught, free from all reproach, 
and approved of by all good men, as far as the degree 
of Master, as it is termed." 

The simple truth is that Milton did not particularly 
enjoy " college." He does not look back to this time of 
his life with any great affection. He was refined in his 
tastes, and studious by choice. The rougher men nick- 
named him " The Lady," — quite as much, probably, for 
his haughty refinement as for his delicate beauty. An- 
thony Wood says that he " performed the collegiate and 
academical exercises to the admiration of all, and was 
esteemed to be a virtuous and sober person, yet not to 
be ignorant of his own parts." College popularity based 
on the trait suggested by the last clause of Wood's char- 
acterization would certainly be a plant of slow growth, in 
our day, no less than in Milton's. None the less, when 
Milton signed the Articles of Religion on the occasion 
of his receiving the Master's degree, his name heads the 
list of those from Christ's College. And there were stu- 
dents of talent and worth in Cambridge who must have 



Introduction 17 

appreciated the poet's genius whether they enjoyed his 
manners or not. Here were Edward King, whom 
Milton celebrated as Lycidas ; the satirical poet, John 
Cleveland; Henry More, the Platonist; Jeremy Taylor, 
pauper scholar, and " golden " writer ; Edmund Waller, 
"nursed in parliaments"; quaint Thomas Fuller, and 
Thomas Randolph, earlier employer of Milton's famous 
phrase, " buxom, blithe, and debonair." The list of 
Latin and English " pieces " produced by Milton during 
his stay at Cambridge is long, and full of interest to the 
student. Still more than the titles, the pieces themselves 
supply much material for the history of Milton's opinions 
and some evidence in regard to facts of his biography. 
Most of those remained in manuscript ; only two pro- 
ductions finding their way into print at the time. The 
Natm-am non pati Senium was printed for academic 
purposes. The lines On Shakespeare appeared anony- 
mously in the Second Folio of Shakespeare, published in 
1632. It is a pity that the wholly deserved attention 
given to the English poems should seem to have diverted 
an equally well merited interest from the Latin composi- 
tions in prose and verse. At the risk, however, of still 
further emphasizing this inequity, the young reader's love 
and admiration are "bespoke" for the type of scholar 
who expressed his own ideals and "joy of living " in such 
poems as these : 



Milton's minor poems- 



1 8 Milton's Minor Poems 



AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET 
VV. SHAKESPEARE 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 

The labour of an age in piled stones ? 

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 

Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 

For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art 

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, 

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving ; 

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie 

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 



ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year ! 
My hasting days fly on with full career, 
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 
That I to manhood am arrived so near ; 
And inward ripeness doth much less appear, 
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow. 
It shall be still in strictest measure even 



Introduction 19 

To that same lot, however mean or high, 

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 

All is, if I have grace to use it so, 

As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. 

Other well-known English poems of this period are 
On the Death of a Fair Infant (1626), At a Vacation 
Exercise (1628), On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 
(1629), On the University Carrier (1630). 

From the evidence of letters and statements bearing 
directly and indirectly on the subject, it is well known 
that Milton's father originally intended him for the 
church. But the great changes that had taken place in 
the pohtical condition of England during his stay at 
Cambridge, where he was always an alert and sensitive 
observer of contemporary events, had evidently reinforced 
"an inward prompting" which, wherever it was to carry 
him, forbade his taking orders in the church of England. 

To Horton, a small village of Buckinghamshire, near 
Windsor and twenty miles from London, Milton's father 
had gone to live when he retired from business, and here 
Milton spent five years and eight months in study and 
literary work. His account is, "I was wholly intent, 
through a period of absolute leisure, on a steady perusal 
of the Greek and Latin writers, but still so that occasion- 
ally I exchanged the country for the city, either for the 
purpose of buying books, or for that of learning anything 
new in Mathematics or in Music, in which I then took 
delight." Milton's taste for music was one that he shared 
with his father and it must have strengthened the uncom- 



20 Milton's Minor Poems 

mon sympathy between them. Possibly, even, it may 
have helped the older man to withstand his own wistful 
impatience to see his son give some fruit of his genius, 
instead of so prolonging the time of "ripening." To 
the influences of this time may not improbably be added 
the natural grief of a sensitive young man over the death 
of a good mother. A plain slab in the floor of the Hor- 
ton Parish Church reads : " Heare lyeth the Body of 
Sara Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd 
of April, 1637." About the same time died Edward King, 
fellow of Milton's college in Cambridge. The first-fruits 
of Milton's peculiar genius also belong to this time. For 
here Masson places the best of what are called Milton's 
minor poems. These are : L Allegro, II Fenseroso, Ar- 
cades, At a Solemn Music, On Time, Upon the Circum- 
cision, Comus, Lycidas. 

Nor was the scholarship of Milton unrecognized. The 
laborious days and reading nights of this terrible worker 
were making him one of the most learned men of his 
time. Milton was admitted to the master's degree at 
Oxford in 1635. 

But Milton had long dreamed of travel. His thoughts 
turned to the centres of historic and artistic influence on 
the Continent. In April, 1638, he gained his father's 
somewhat reluctant consent to his plans. 

He left his father at Horton in the companionship of 
his younger son, Christopher Milton, and his newly 
wedded wife, Thomasine Webber, of London. Well fur- 
nished with letters of introduction, among which was one 



Introduction 11 

from Sir Henry Wotton, Milton, accompanied by a man- 
servant, went to Paris. Here through the attention of 
Lord Scudamore, the EngHsh ambassador to Louis XHI, 
he met the learned jurist Hugo Grotius, then living 
in Paris as ambassador from Sweden. Through Nice, 
Leghorn, and Pisa, Milton made his way to Florence, 
where he stayed about two months, and met, greatly 
to his satisfaction, the wits and scholars of the city, be- 
sides enjoying the beauties and associations of the neigh- 
bourhood. He speaks of receiving courtesies that he can 
never forget from Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Dati, Pietro 
Friscobaldo, Agostino ColtelHni, Benedetto Buommattei, 
Valerio Chimentelli, and Antonio Francini. He saw, 
too, " the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the 
Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the 
Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." A similar 
experience of gratifying attentions from citizens of note 
and consideration met him in Rome. He attended a 
concert in the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini 
and heard Leonora Baroni sing. He was made free of 
the literary clubs, and in Naples met Giovanni Battista 
Manso, full of years and honour. This friend of Tasso 
was most gracious to Milton, whose sense of indebtedness 
expressed itself in a Latin poem. Manso replied by the 
gift of two engraved goblets and a Latin epigram. Milton 
said of their intercourse : " I experienced from him as 
long as I remained there, the most friendly attentions. 
He accompanied me to the various parts of the city, and 
took me over the Viceroy's palace, and came more than 



22 Milton's Minor Poems 

once to my lodgings to visit me. At ray departure he 
made earnest excuses to me for not having been able to 
show me the further attentions which he desired in that 
city, on account of my unwillingness to conceal my re- 
ligious sentiments." 

In Naples "the sad news of civil war" reached him, 
and he resolved to return to England, " inasmuch," he 
says, " as I thought it base to be travelling at my ease 
for intellectual culture while my fellow countrymen at 
home were fighting for liberty." This estimate of the 
critical condition of affairs in England was not strictly 
accurate, as doubtless Milton soon found out, for he 
made his journey in the fashion and pace of a philosopher 
or poet rather than in that of the soldier or anxious pa- 
triot. He revisited Rome and Florence and sought out 
the Protestants of Geneva. He held daily intercourse 
with Dr. Jean Diodati, who was not only an eminent 
theologian, but commended to Milton as the uncle of his 
friend, Charles Diodati. It was August, 1639, before 
he reached England. The literary result of this journey 
took the immediate form of Latin familiar epistles, Latin 
poems, and Italian sonnets. During his journeying Milton 
had learned the painful fact of the death of his close 
friend, Charles Diodati. His return to Horton made 
the details of his bereavement so sadly familiar to him 
that only the foreign tongue in which it is written makes 
the Epitaphiuffi Damonis second to Lycidas as an ex- 
pression of noble grief. As an outburst of personal regret 
even the Latin barrier cannot conceal its superiority. 



Introduction 23 

Towards the close of 1639 Milton went into lodgings 
in London. Here he hoped for studious leisure in which 
to produce a great EngHsh poem. But the sympathy 
of the English Puritans with the Scottish opposition to 
Episcopacy, the contest of the Long Parliament with 
Charles I, and Milton's Hfelong sense of duty combined 
to make an atmosphere in which the poet's singing robes 
and garland seemed hopelessly out of place. With the 
breaking out of civil war in 1642, Milton had definitely 
committed himself to the Parliament side. But a short 
hst of dates and a brief statement of a single decision do 
scant justice to the complexity of Milton's character or 
the multiplicity of his interests. His effort to live satis- 
factorily in Fleet Street lodgings had been given up after 
a brief trial. He moved to a detached house with a gar- 
den, in Aldersgate Street, where he could have more of 
what were almost necessities to him, then and always, — 
privacy and quiet. His mental attitude at this time may 
be best described in his own words, "... with no small 
dehght, I resumed my intermitted studies, cheerfully 
leaving the issue of public affairs, first to God, and then 
to those to whom the people had committed that charge." 
His practical energy took the form of " commencing 
schoolmaster." His two nephews, Edward and John 
Phillips, had been " put to board " with him. These, 
with a small number of boys, " the sons of gentlemen 
who were his intimate friends," made a school that must 
indeed have justified the description of it as select. The 
course of study included mathematics and astronomy, 



24 Milton's Minor Poems 

Syriac, Chaldee, Hebrew, Greek, French, Latin, Italian, 
and the compilation from dictated notes of a system of 
divinity arranged by Milton himself. The master be- 
lieved in severe discipline, but used familiar and free 
conversation; he worked hard, lived on a spare diet for 
an example to his students ; but, none the less, gave him- 
self what he called " a gaudy day," with " young sparks 
of his acquaintance," about once a month. His resolve 
to trust the issue of public affairs to God and then to 
those appointed by the people was soon invaded by 
"noises and hoarse disputes." 

In 1 64 1 appeared Of Reformation touching Church 
Discipline in England and the Causes that have hitherto 
Hindered It, by Milton ; and the reply to Bishop Hall's 
Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament 
entitled Smectymmnts, a word made up of the initials 
5f the names of the authors, by five Puritan ministers. 
These were Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas 
Young (Milton's first teacher), Matthew Newcomen, 
and William Spurstow. In the controversy that fol- 
lowed, Milton published Of Prelatical Episcopacy, 
The Reason of Church Government urged against 
Prelaty, Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's De- 
fense against Smectymnuus. Complete absorption in 
these high matters and stormy debates must have been 
prevented by two events of personal significance to 
Milton. One was the advent of Milton's father. In 
1643 he came from the house of his son Christopher 
in Reading to live with the poet. With John Milton he 



Introduction 25 

lived until his death, in 1647. The other was the poet's 
marriage, thus described by Phillips : " About Whitsun- 
tide, he [Milton] took a journey into the country, no- 
body about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it 
was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's 
stay home, he returns a married man who set out a 
bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of 
Mr. Richard Powell, then a Justice of the Peace of For- 
est Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." 

The Powell family was Royalist in its political sym- 
pathy. Mr. Justice Powell was in debt to Milton for 
a considerable sum of money, lent by his father. In 
spite of a " feasting held for some days in celebration of 
the nuptials," within two months of the marriage day, 
Milton's bride accepted an invitation from her friends in 
the country to visit them. The somewhat miscellaneous 
or conflicting considerations mentioned above did not" 
afford grounds for a strong enough sense of conjugal duty 
to bring the lady back at the Michaelmas appointed by 
Milton as the limit of her stay. Milton's efforts to regain 
his wife were treated "with some sort of contempt," nor 
did she return for two years. This return has been vari- 
ously interpreted as due to considerations of selfish pohcy, 
quickened by the course of public events, the need of 
support for the falling family fortunes, or the fear of her 
husband's acting upon the theories of divorce and mar- 
riage he was so fluently elaborating. For in 1644 Milton 
had published, at first anonymously. The Doctrine and 
Discipline of Divorce ; in 1645, Tetrachordon, or Expo- 



26 Milton's Minor Poems 

siiions upon the Four Chief Places of Scripture which treat 
of Marriage, and Colas terion the reply to an attack upon 
his first work on divorce. After Milton's forgiveness of 
his wife, he moved to a house in Barbican, where he 
received his impoverished father-in-law and his family 
after the surrender of Oxford. For a matter of two years, 
until Mr. Powell's death in January, 1647, Milton sup- 
ported the family. His efforts to recover the sequestered 
property were partly successful. His residence in the 
house in Barbican was also marked by the birth of his 
first child, Anne, July 29, 1646. 

To the year 1644 also belong the Tractate oft Educa- 
tion^ the Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Liberty of Un- 
licensed Printing. The Areopagitica is the greatest of 
Milton's prose works, both for the sentiments it embodies 
and the dignity of its piled-up periods. The controversy 
between the Presbyterians and the Independents supplied 
him with occasion for weighty argument and sharp-drawn 
distinctions, but the close of the Civil War, in 1648, found 
Milton's store of poetry increased by only nine sonnets 
and a few efforts in Latin. Meantime he had moved 
again to a house in Holborn, where a second daughter, 
Mary, was born. But even settled domestic relations did 
not reheve Milton from the burden of public affairs. The 
execution of Charles I, in 1649, called out from the poet 
turned " proser " a defense under the title The Tenu7'eof 
Kings and Magistrates. So it was probably no matter for 
surprise when he was commissioned Secretary of Foreign 
Tongues to the new Commonwealth by the Council 



Introduction 27 

of State, March, 1649. His taste for statecraft was 
also indicated in the Observations on Ortnond's Articles 
of Peace with the Irish Rebels. The duties of the Latin 
Secretary, as Milton was called, are said by Professor 
Masson to have been much like those of the head of 
the present Foreign Office under the rninister of that 
department for the English government. There was, 
however, one important difference ; the council of state 
in Milton's time, as Masson accurately notes, managed 
the foreign ministry as well as all the other depart- 
ments of state. During the early years of Milton's 
discharge of the duties of his post, the man and the 
poet practically disappear in the official. But as the 
man and his aims were great, so the officer was never 
petty. Milton never became a mere clerk or substitute 
for a district messenger boy. His labour was literally 
terrible, the sense of duty and of " a clear call " became 
a '' strong compulsion." He was warned that he had al- 
ready overtaxed his eyes and must look for total bUndness 
unless he would lessen his heavy demands upon them. 
But these efforts were not called forth by the correspond- 
ence with kings or the interviews with 'ambassadors, use- 
ful as Milton was in these relations. Nor could his activity 
as official licenser of a newspaper called Mercurius Poli- 
ticus, uncongenial and therefore costly as such oversight 
might seem to be to the author of the Areopagitica, have 
been particularly burdensome. The truth is that Milton 
was something between a" learned counsel," retained by 
the Commonwealth, and its strong-hearted champion, 



28 Milton's Minor Poems 

ready to take up whatever gage was thrown down. Dur- 
ing the ten years in which he defended it from all attacks, 
his prose work is represented by the Eikonoklastes, 1649, 
written in reply to the famous Eikon Basilike (Royal Im- 
age), supposed to be the prayers and meditations of Charles 
I ; the Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, 165 1, in reply to the 
Leyden professor, Salmasius. For this last, the council 
returned thanks to " Mr. Milton." The critics and schol- 
ars of Europe made it their talk for months and expressed 
amazement at the " manghng " that the great Salmasius 
had suffered at the hands of one of " the English Mas- 
tiffs." But in 1652 he was totally bhnd. He says : "The 
choice lay before me, between dereliction of a supreme 
duty and loss of eyesight ; in such a case I could not 
hsten to the physician, not if ^sculapius himself had 
spoken from his sanctuary : I could not but obey that 
inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from 
heaven. I considered with myself that many had pur- 
chased less good with worse ill, as they who give their 
Hves to reap only glory, and I thereupon concluded to 
employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in 
doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was 
in my power to render." 

In the years from 1649 ^^ 1652 he had lived at Char- 
ing Cross and in Scotland Yard, Whitehall, that he might 
be near the scene of his duties. In the beginning of 
1652, however, he moved to a garden house in Petty 
France, Westminster, opening into St. James's Park. 
This house was later owned by Jeremy Bentham ; and oc- 



Introduction 29 

cupied by William Hazlitt, in 181 1. The preoccupation 
of Milton's mind with the stir and smoke of conflict may 
be inferred from the fact that in the ten years of his ac- 
tive employment by the government, he wrote only eight 
sonnets and a few Latin pieces in the interests of artistic 
iiterature. In 1653-4 his wife died at the birth of a 
daughter, Deborah. In 1656 he married again, Catherine 
Woodcock, who died in childbirth fifteen months after 
marriage. In 1662-3 he married a third wife, Elizabeth 
Minshull, she being twenty-four and Milton fifty-four years 
of age. His relations with his daughters were not happy 
and hardly reasonable. The eldest was somewhat de- 
formed, at this time in her seventeenth year, the next in 
her fifteenth, the third in her eleventh. The eldest could 
not write at all, the other two " but indifferent well." So 
the legend of their writing to his dictation is not strictly 
accurate. In lieu of better help, however, he would make 
the younger ones read to him, and to this end he had 
taught them to read in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, 
Spanish, and Hebrew, although they did not themselves 
understand a word of what they were reading. They 
soon rebelled. He reproached them. He said they 
*' made nothing of deserting him," they " made away with 
some of his books, and would have sold the rest to the 
dunghill women," they " did combine together and coun- 
cil his maid-servant to cheat him in her marketings." 
On the other hand, when his second daughter heard of 
his intention of marrying again, she said that " that was 
no news, to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of 



30 



Milton's Minor Poems 



his death, that was something." This miserable state of 
things was modified for the better by the advent into the 
family of the stepmother, and was finally ended by her 
plan, put in force about 1669, by which the three daugh- 
ters no longer tried to live with their father, but went 
out, at their father's expense, " to learn some curious 
and ingenious sorts of manufacture that are proper for 
women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold and 
silver." 

Milton's literary work from 1652 to 1664 was impor- 
tant and interesting. There were fourteen of his Latin 
familiar epistles as one item. In 1654, appeared his 
reply to the anonymous attack made upon him in the 
interest of Salmasius. It was entided Joannis Miltoni 
Angli pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda. Through- 
out this work Milton assumes that the author of the 
attack was Alexander More or Morus ; in reality, it was 
Peter du Moulin. And Milton's abuse of Morus is ter- 
rible. His eulogy of Cromwell and the heroes of the 
Commonwealth is as splendid as his vituperation of their 
enemies. Morus replied to Milton, who responded, in 
1655, \^\\X\ Joannis Miltoni Angli pro se Defensio contra 
Alexandrum Morum, Here belong six sonnets of Mil- 
ton's best : On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655), On 
His Blindness, To Mr. Lawrence, To Cyriack Skinner, 
To the Same (1655), On His Deceased Wife (1658). 

Four of these sonnets are so valuable in the knowl- 
edge they afford of Milton that the student should study 
them affectionately and repeatedly. 



Introduction 31 



ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, 
Forget not : in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 



ON HIS BLINDNESS 

When 1 consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide. 

And that one talent which is death to hide 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he returning chide, 

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" 

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 

Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is kingly : thousands at his bidding speed. 

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 

They also serve who only stand and wait." 



32 Milton's Minor Poems 



TO CYRIACK SKINNER, ON HIS BLINDNESS 

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear 

To outward view of blemish or of spot, 

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot ; 

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 

Of sun or moon or star, throughout the year, 

Or man or woman.' Yet I argue not 

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 

Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 

In Liberty's defence, my noble task, 

Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 

Content though blind, had I no better guide. 



ON HIS DECEASED WIFE 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. 
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. 
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 
Purification in the old Law did save, 
And such as yet once more I trust to have 
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, 
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight 
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined 
So clear as in no face with more delight. 
But oh ! as to embrace me she inclined, 
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 



Introduction 33 

This period of Milton's life takes on special interest for 
the student in view of the widely held opinion among 
literary critics that Milton was right in his feeling that he 
could work out only part, and that the baser part, of his 
great task by writing prose. That Milton should have 
preferred to write poetry, is natural, and we can under- 
stand his feeling of " left-handed ness " while he was about 
his pamphlets and state papers, but we cannot feel full 
sympathy with those who regret the time and strength 
expended on them. Nor do the facts give ground for 
such regret. For there is Httle if any doubt that Pat-a- 
dise Lost was actually begun in the last year of the Pro- 
tectorate. The subject as a suitable one for his great 
work had been in Milton's mind since 1639 or 1640, 
although, as it was first planned, the poem was to have 
been in dramatic form. Meantime Milton was writing 
eleven Latin letters in the interests of Richard Cromwell, 
and two for the restored Rump ParHament after the fail- 
ure and abdication of Richard. At this time, October 
1659, Andrew Marvell was his colleague in the office of 
secretary. A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 
Causes and Considerations toiichifig the Likeliest Means 
to remove LLirelings out of the Chwrh are titles showing 
the direction of Milton's efforts in these wretched times. 
The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commofi- 
wealth, in March i66o, showed Milton still bearing up 
and steering right onward, despite a desperate certainty 
that the cause was lost and further struggle no more than 
a show of personal courage. Later editions and other 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — -f, 



34 



Milton's Minor Poems 



efforts of his are full of vehemence and urgent apprehen- 
sion of the evil certain to come upon the British Islands. 
Poetry during this impending crisis he wrote none ; in- 
stead he must have needed all his natural and acquired 
fortitude to bear up under the contemptuous retort of 
Roger L'Estrange in his No Blind Gtiides. Three Latin 
famihar epistles belong to this time. Charles II made 
his entry into London, May 29. Some of the bloody 
revenges that Milton had prophesied came about. But 
by some extraordinary dispensation, Milton escaped. To 
avoid apprehension, he fled from his house in Petty 
France and was concealed in a friend's house in Bar- 
tholomew Close, near Smithfield, while the Convention 
Parliament discussed the punishment proper for the 
regicides and anti-royaUsts. The fifty- four survivors 
of the seventy-seven "king's judges" who had tried and 
condemned Charles I were objects of bitter denunciation 
and active search. They were of course foremost on the 
list of those excepted from a Bill of General Indemnity 
and Oblivion, brought into the Commons in accord with 
the restored king's desire for clemency. Another hst of 
some thirty or forty were denounced for general demerit 
and delinquency. The Commons on the i6th of June 
ordered Milton's arrest and indictment by the attorney- 
general on the score of the Eikonoklastes and the 
Defensio pro Popido Anglicano contra Salmasium. After 
due petition, a royal proclamation on the 13th of August 
called in all copies of these books and ordered them to 
be burned. But Milton's name never appeared in any of 



Introduction 35 

the lists of persons excepted from the Bill of Indemnity, 
assented to by the king, August 29. Technically, then, 
Milton escaped by default, as it might be. There is little 
doubt, however, that he had powerful friends in the 
Commons and the Lords who protected his life and then 
advanced his interests as they could from time to time. 
For a short time he was in custody, but the records of 
the House of Commons show an order to the sergeant- 
at-arms to release Mr. Milton on the payment of his fees. 
Milton complained that the fees were exorbitant and Mr. 
Andrew Marvell was the member who brought his com- 
plaint before the House. Milton's complete release was 
followed by a short stay in Holborn, near the present 
Red Lion Square, with a still later removal to a house in 
Jewin Street in the neighbourhood of Aldersgate Street. 
In 1664, probably, Milton moved to what was to be the 
last of his London houses. This was in Artillery Walk, 
leading out of Bunhill Fields. Here, within two years, 
in 1665, Paradise LostwsiS completed. It was pubHshed 
in 1667. Gradually the world changed for Milton. The 
"blind old rascal," the thwarted patriot, the man fallen 
on evil days, and evil tongues, in darkness and compassed 
round with dangers and soHtude, had come to his own 
again. As Dryden is said to have put it, " This man cuts 
us all out, and the ancients too." From this time on 
Milton had no reason to complain of solitude. Professor 
Masson's account of Milton's habits and mode of living 
during the last ten years of his life is so interesting and 
so instructive that it deserves quotation in full. " He 



^6 Milton's Minor Poems 

used to get up very early, generally at four o'clock in 
summer and five in winter. After having a chapter or 
two of the Hebrew Bible read to him, he worked, first in 
meditation by himself, and then after breakfast by dicta- 
tion to his amanuensis for the time being, interspersed 
with farther readings to him from the books he wanted 
to consult, till near his midday dinner. A good part of 
the afternoon was then given to walking in the garden 
(and a garden of some kind had been always a requisite 
with him), or to playing on the organ, and singing, or 
hearing his wife sing within doors. His wife, he said, 
had a good voice, but no ear. Later in the afternoon he 
resumed work ; but about six o'clock he was ready to 
receive evening visitors, and to talk with them till about 
eight, when there was a supper of ' olives or some light 
thing.' He was very temperate at meals, drinking 
very Httle ' wine or strong liquors of any kind ' ; but his 
conversation at dinner and supper was very pleasant and 
cheerful, with a tendency to the satirical. This humour 
for satire was connected by some of his hearers with his 
strong way of pronouncing the letter ;- ; ' litera canina^ 
the dog letter, the certain sign of a satirical wit,' as 
Dryden said to Aubrey when they were talking of this 
personal trait of Milton. After supper, when left to him- 
self, he smoked his pipe and drank a glass of water before 
going to bed ; which was usually at nine o'clock. He 
attended no church, and belonged to no communion, 
nor had he any regular prayers in his family, having some 
principle of his own on that subject which his friends did 



Introduction 37 

not understand. His favourite attitude in dictating was 
sitting somewhat aslant in an elbow-chair, with his leg 
thrown over one of the arms. He would dictate his 
verses, thirty or forty at a time, to any one that happened 
to be at hand. . . . His poetical vein, Phillips tells us, 
flowed most happily * from the autumnal equinox to the 
vernal,' i.e., from the end of September to the end of 
March, — so that, with all his exertions through the other 
half of the year, he was never so well satisfied with the 
results. His poor health, and frequent headaches, and 
other pains, were another interference with his work; 
but less than might have been supposed. Gout was his 
most confirmed ailment, and it had begun to stiffen his 
hands." 

Jonathan Richardson, the painter, is quoted by Professor 
Masson as follows : " I have heard many years since, that 
he used to sit in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of 
his house near Bunhill Fields, without Moorgate, in warm, 
sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as 
in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished 
parts as well as quahty : and very lately I had the good 
fortune to have another picture of him from an aged 
clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright. He found him in 
a small house, he thinks but one room on a floor. In 
that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty 
green, he found John Milton sitting in an elbow-chair, 
black clothes, and neat enough ; pale, but not cadaver- 
ous ; his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones. 
Among other discourse he expressed himself to this pur- 



38 Milton's Minor Poems 

pose, — that was he free from the pain this gave him, his 
bUndness would be tolerable." 

During the last four or five years of Milton's life he 
published, in 1669, Accedence Couimenc' d Grammar ; in 

1670, Histoiy of Britain to the Norman Conquest ; in 

167 1, Paradise Regained^ and Samsoji Agofiistes ; in 1672, 
a Latin treatise on logic, according to the system of 
Ramus. 

Milton died on Sunday, November 8, 1674, very 
quietly of " gout struck in." He was laid beside his 
father in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and was 
followed to his grave by "all his learned and great 
friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of 
the vulgar." 

It would seem that Milton's Hterary activity had been 
enough, as shown by the record already given, to fill one 
lifetime ; but seven years after his death appeared a few 
pages under the title Mr. JoJm Milton's Character of the 
Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines. It was alleged 
that this had been omitted from the History of Britain 
when Milton pubHshed it in 1670. In 1682 was pub- 
lished A Brief Histojy of Muscovia ajid of other less 
known countries lying eastward of Russia as far as 
Cathay. A London bookseller in 1676 published a sur- 
reptitious edition of the Latin State Letters. A better 
edition appeared in 1690, and Phillips's translation in 
1694. John Nickolls, in 1743, edited Milton's Letters 
and Addresses of Cromwell in a thin folio. But far 
more important than any of these is the long-lost treatise, 



Introduction 39 

De Doctrina Christiana. This was published and trans- 
lated by Dr. Sumner in 1825. It is no less interesting 
to the student of Milton's opinions than to the ad- 
mirer of his genius. Here he appears to be no Trini- 
tarian, no Calvinist, no Sabbatarian. He does not hold 
the commonly received doctrine with regard to spirit 
and matter, or body and soul. These he considers one 
and inseparable. He does behave in a literal resurrec- 
tion of all that have ever lived. The Bible he holds to be 
the sole rule of Christian faith, but it is to be studied and 
interpreted by every man for himself He believes in 
war against tyranny ; in prayers and curses against bad 
men. He insists upon the right of divorce, and defends 
polygamy. Among these heresies he manages to move 
with decision and composure, and whatever surprise and 
fear the reader may feel at such world-shaking doctrines, 
it is clear that Johrf Milton feels none. 

More than two hundred and fifty years ago, namely, in 
1648, there was printed in London a book of Latin prose 
and verse, called Novcb Solymce Libri Sex. It apparently 
attracted no attention from the public then, and remained 
in the dust of library corners until the Rev. Walter 
Begley translated and edited it under the following title 
and description : Nova Solyma, the Ideal City : or Jeru- 
salem Regained. An anojiymous roma7ice written in the 
time of Charles I, now first drawn fi'om obscurity and 
attributed to the illustrious John Milton. . . . ig02. 
Professor Gummere says of this claim upon " the illustri- 
ous John Milton" : "Unless strong external evidence is 



40 Milton's Minor Poems 

forthcoming, we can never be wholly justified in shelving 
Nova Solyma beside Paradise Lost, yet the case is so 
probable that the book must hereafter be reckoned with 
by all thoroughgoing students of Milton." The gratitude 
of the thoroughgoing student is at all events due to Mr. 
Begley for this opportunity to study in detail the copious 
extracts from the Latin original. It is no slight privilege 
to be able to scan the literary workmanship of an artist 
who, if he were not John Milton, was clearly the only other 
man of Milton's time who chose hard thoughts to play 
with, and who could write better Latin verse than prose. 
And whoever the author, the student of Milton will do 
well to make himself familiar with a type of phrase that 
bears the most extraordinary resemblance to Milton's in 
structure and use. 

IL L' Allegro, II Penseroso 

These poems were published by Milton in the collec- 
tion of his works made in 1645. They have been vari- 
ously interpreted. There are the strict constructionists 
and the free. There are critics who find them mines of 
autobiography, and others who find them storehouses 
of information about nature in her various moods. Some 
even assert their faith in Milton's psychological and patho- 
logical purpose of analysis of mood and portraiture of 
temperament. And doubtless there is some truth in all this. 
Milton left few fields unharvested, his young curiosity 
was tireless, his reading was omnivorous. The quotation 



Introduction 41 

heaps of Burton seemed no burden upon his intellectual 
endurance. The appearance of Gunter's Tables was 
received by him as an aid and elegant diversion rather 
than as a labour-saving device. Attempts have been made 
to reduce these poems from poetry to anatomy and psy- 
chology of the precisely scientific sort. Just how much 
these men or moods have in common with each other, 
and how far either or both stand for the author in his 
normal state when free from the fine frenzy of the poet ; 
precisely how far the men and the moods are mutually 
exclusive — these are questions which have had at least 
the merit of producing minutely careful study of the 
verses. But the main thing invariably discovered is that 
the poetry is very beautiful and alluring poetry. And 
from the seductions of this poetry the reader comes 
back to hfe and himself happier and better and stronger. 
Emotion has been varied by emotion, without strain and 
without tension, and, above all, without sensation. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke says : " I do not think that 
V Allegro, II Penseroso, and Comiis have any lower place 
in the world, or any less enduring life, than Paradise 
Lost. We have thought so much of Milton's strength 
and sublimity that we have ceased to recognize what is 
also true, that he, of all English poets, is by nature the 
supreme lover of beauty." 

But probably no other English poet has looked upon 
beauty with so powerful a brain and conscience behind 
the seeing eyes. " Follow Virtue. She alone is free," 
his level, steady gaze at the insolence and pomp of fleet- 



42 Milton's Minor Poems 

ing Beauty seems to say. What the earliest Life of 
Milton, recently published for the first time by Dr. 
Edward S. Parsons of Colorado College, records of him 
in another important relation of hfe is no less true of 
him in this : 

" From so Christian a Life, so great Learning, and so 
unbyass'd a search after Truth it is not probable any 
errors in Doctrine should spring. And therefore his 
Judgment in his Body of Divinity concerning some 
speculative points, differing perhaps from that commonly 
received (and which is thought to bee the reason that 
never was printed), neither ought rashly to bee con- 
demned, and however himselfe not to bee uncharitably 
censur'd ; who by beeing a constant Champion for the 
liberty of opining, expressed much Candour towards 
others." 

III. Arcades 

This work of Milton's has been too often lightly set 
aside as a mere understudy for Comus. It possesses 
great interest in view of its occasion, its subject-matter, 
and its form. The occasion was the celebration of the 
seventy years of the life of the Countess-Dowager of 
Derby, one of the three daughters of Sir John Spencer, 
known from Colin Cloufs Come Home Again as Ph)«}lis, 
Charillis, and Sweet AmaryUis. Amaryllis (Alice) had 
married Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who had already been 
married twice, for her first husband. In 1600, six years 



Introduction 43 

after his death, she became the second wife of Sir Thomas 
Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. At their estate 
of Harefield, during Queen Elizabeth's visit of four days, 
Burbage's company played Othello, Masks of various 
sorts were an important part of this royal entertainment. 
Lord Egerton died in 16 17. Two sons of the Earl of 
Bridgewater, stepsons to the Countess, planned this en- 
tertainment in her honour and themselves took part in 
Arcades. Milton treats the occasion with dignified ap- 
preciation, but with the self-respect and sense of ultimate 
values unfailing in him at all times. It is interesting to 
see how the young poet spiritualizes the traditionally 
robust, not to say heavy, entertainment of the English 
public. 

In the material Milton uses, the student and the man 
of culture are frankly revealed. The verses demonstrate 
the author's wide interests, personal independence, and a 
determination already taken to err with Plato rather than 
to be right with Aristotle That he failed to understand 
either Plato or Aristotle is little to the point. This poem 
may fairly be considered a sort of spiritual log-book of a 
young adventurer in the sea of thought. Many men had 
sailed those seas before, and the weather and the ocean 
had been charted often, but never by a more resolute or 
a more devoted sailor. 

The form adopted, that of the Mask, was at this 
time peculiarly fitted to serve as the medium for the ex- 
pression of Milton's unique combination of temperament 
and conscience. Historically the English Mask owed 



44 Milton's Minor Poems 

as much to the Miracle Plays and Moralities of EngUsh 
guilds and churches as to the pageants of Florence or the 
faint survival of Greek drama. Ben Jonson was the great- 
est of English Masters of the Revels. Inigo Jones was the 
great scene painter for entertainments that cost as high as 
^21,000, and Henry Lawes composed music for them. 
In 1632 the Mask, with other theatrical entertainments 
had been attacked in the Histrio-Mastix : The Player's 
Scourge, as "the very pomp of the Divell." It is clear 
that while Milton held no such opinion, he was quite 
willing to detract from the spectacular effect of the per- 
formance by the charm and beauty of the poetry he 
offered as text. Arcades is as much more than a mere 
" show " as the conventional Mask was less than the 
pomp of the devil. 

The manuscript oi Arcades is in Milton's handwriting 
in the Cambridge manuscripts. It appeared in print in 
the 1645 edition of the poet's work. 

That Milton was not the first of English poets to feel 
instinctive opposition to the part played by stage machin- 
ery in the Mask is shown by reputed references, allu- 
sions, and even direct attacks by critics and authors. 
But no one of them all asserted himself so finally, and so 
triumphantly demonstrated his superiority of all aids or 
rivals, as did Milton. 

The professional jealousy felt by Ben Jonson for the 
stage setting of Masks and the more magnanimous, 
because constructive and competitive, opposition of Mil- 
ton is most interestingly justified in a recent account and 



Introduction 



45 



appreciation of the work of Inigo Jones by Ernest Rhys 
in The Nhieteenth Century for July, 1903. The author 
says, " Like other men who have Uved for their ideas, 
he [Inigo Jones] showed an extraordinary persistence in 
realizing them. . . . One is tempted by the further evi- 
dence of his masks to consider him not only an artist 
whose great ideal expressed itself in his smallest works 
and a designer ' haunted by proportion,' but a master- 
builder, who, if he had had his way, and the sky had not 
fallen in the Civil War, would have done something to 
build up a London as ordered and stately as any Italian 
City. . . . Indeed all that can be said of him in the 
praise of his work by those successors of his own calling 
to-day who alone perhaps can wholly appreciate its merits, 
has been said. But there is still one thing to be done, 
to fill up the chart of his ambition and the outlines of 
his never-to-be-realized dream of a great city rising 
majestically along the Thames : and for that we must turn 
to the series of masks which he helped to design. For 
in the masks his ruling passion and his overmastering 
ambition more and more declared themselves, as time 
went on, leading incidentally to his quarrel with Ben 
Jonson, and hinting very plainly at that larger work which 
he fondly hoped to accomphsh. . . . 

" Probably after his return from his first journey to 
Italy — the native region of the mask — in 1604, he felt 
he had a right to dictate what should be its appropriate 
scenic effects to Ben Jonson and the poets who naturally 
cared more for their poetry than its stage setting. . . . 



46 Milton's Minor Poems 

He spends hours over the fashion of a mantle, describing 
half a circle, and cast back over the shoulders, or hanging 
in a sinuous fringe. With these we have studies by the 
pageful from some old picture ; of face or feature, eye or 
eyebrow, or children's limbs and children's curves, and 
figures curiously drawn to determine the proportions 
and the proportionate hnes and movements of the body 
and its garments. . 

" In all these sketches of the figure, we find our artist 
much absorbed in examining and defining the structure 
behind the apparition of beauty. He saw men as he saw 
houses, expressions of the same law of proportion, whose 
parts of an enchanting symmetry, came of an essentia ( ?) 
and no accidental grace. 

" All this is of moment in judging the special application 
of his art to the stage. Possessed of a genius of the eye, 
that tyrannized over him, and compelled him to find 
expression for it, he found his opening first in the aesthetic 
fantasy of the mask, whose limits he presently extended 
to their utmost capacity. ... It is impossible to trace 
all the minor accessions from its prime Italian source, 
which Inigo Jones may have brought to the Jacobean 
mask. Enough to see how he speedily altered the 
mechanical form, and practically gave us our modern 
stage, and doing so was led to that gradual aggression on 
Ben Jonson's jealous preserve which produced the final 
quarrel between them. In the process, extending over 
many years, we find the expression of his ideas as un- 
mistakably determined in his masks as in his houses. 



Introduction 47 

. . . Inigo gives us very modestly the theory of the 
mask : ' These shows are nothing else but pictures with 
light and motion.' . . . 

"This was in 1631. Two or three years later came, 
the definite break with Ben Jonson, who exclaimed vehe- 
mently at these scenic aggressions on the poet's demesne. 
In the Tale of a Tub he satirized Inigo with one violently 
caricatured part — Vitruvius — which he was compelled 
to withdraw. However, he retained another part, 'In- 
and-in Medlay,' which effected his purpose less grossly. 
' You can express a Tub ? ' says Tub to Medlay, who 
repUes : 

If it conduce 

To the design; whate'er is feasible. 

The two words in italics were evidently favourite expres- 
sions of Inigo Jones's, for they reappear in a later passage. 
"... No doubt the pretty people of the Court, who 
took a part in these gorgeous shows, found it easier to be 
effective as angels in one of Inigo Jones's pasteboard 
heavens, than as actors bound to speak Jonson's lines 
(not always brief ones, either) as he wrote them. At 
any rate, the poet, it proved, could be dispensed with : 
there were other poets, good enough for court-masks : 
there was only one Inigo." 

IV. COMUS 

As the Arcades found its occasion in a family festival 
of close private interest, the more considerable work of 



48 Milton's Minor Poems 

Comus is justified by its connection with a more widely 
significant event. Sir John Egerton, first Earl of Bridge- 
water, was appointed Lord President of the Council in 
the Principality of Wales in 1631. His assumption of 
the duties of the office in 1634 was marked by festivities 
at the official seat of Ludlow Castle. Comus was pre- 
sented Michaelmas night, September 29. Two copies 
exist, one the stage copy of Lawes, the other in Milton's 
handwriting in the Cambridge Manuscript. It was pub- 
lished in the 1645 edition of Milton's work. Lawes had 
previously pubUshed it in 1637. 

Comus has in general the same features noticed in the 
Arcades. Throughout the poem the same high level of 
poetry and humanity is maintained, the same serene in- 
terest in all things worthy and of good report prevails. 
The world is not too much with us when we follow Milton. 
His strongly and worthily egoistic imagination deals with 
thoughts rather than with men, and readily deserts even 
the show of dramatic action for monologue and elaborate 
suggestion running into pathos or irony. Throughout the 
Mask there is an intellectual dryness of atmosphere that 
heightens indefinitely the sort of illusion produced by iso- 
lating the episode for the purpose of thinking about it, 
but that completely destroys the illusion commonly known 
as the natural. Milton's characters go where their sen- 
tences and periods lead them, and these in turn are what 
Milton's reading and reflection made them. In form, for 
example, Milton was past master of verbal harmony, but 
his skill in little tunes was shght. His was not a parlour 



Introduction 49 

voice. In the songs interspersed through Comus this is 
well illustrated. In their proper setting they were doubt- 
less effective, but who sings them now ? Milton's songs, 
the reader suspects, came from his brain and conscience 
by way of his deep-toned organ harmonies and must 
have overpowered many an unsophisticated reader. Or 
with their complexity of suggestion they must have seemed 
artificial to plain folk who missed heartiness and melody 
in all the measures of these book lyrics. The judicious, 
Hke Henry I.awes and Sir Henry Wotton, in Milton's own 
time, applaud ; all must admire ; but the haunting strain, 
the singing spell, the lilt, the catch, are wanting to the 
vulgar. The comment of Sir Henry Wotton leaves little 
to be desired for discriminating appreciation of essential 
character. " Since your going, you have charged me with 
new obligations, both for a very kind letter from you 
dated the 6th of this month, and for a dainty piece 
of entertainment which came therewith. Wherein I 
should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did 
not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your Songs 
and Odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen 
yet nothing parallel in our language : Ipsa mollities.^' 

V. An Expostulation with Inigo Jones 

Ben Jonson 

" Master Surveyor you that first began 
From thirty pounds in pipkins, to the man 
You are : from them leaped forth an architect, 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 4 



so 



Milton's Minor Poems 



Able to talk of Euclid, and correct 

Both him and Archimede ; damn Archytas, 

The noblest engineer that ever was : 

Control Ctesibius, overbearing us 

With mistook names out of Vitruvius ; 

Drawn Aristotle on us, and thence shown 

How much Architectonice is your own ! 

Whether the building of the stage or scene, 

Or making of the properties it mean, 

Vizors or antics ; or it comprehend 

Something your sir-ship doth not yet intend. 

By all your titles, and whole style at once, 

Of tireman, mountebank and Justice Jones, 

I do salute you : are you fitted yet ? 

Will any of these express your place, or wit ? 

Or are you so ambitious 'bove 5^our peers, 

You'd be an Assinigo by your ears ? 

Why much good do't you ; be what part you will, 

You'll be, as Langley said, ' an Inigo still.' 

What makes your v^'retchedness to bray so loud 

In town and court ? Are you grown rich, and proud ? 

Your trappings will not change you, change your mind ; 

No velvet suit -you wear will alter kind. 

A wooden dagger is a dagger of wood, 

Nor gold, nor ivory haft can make it good. 

What is the cause you pomp it so, I ask ? 

And all men echo, you have made a mask. 

I chime that too, and I have met with those 

That do cry up the machine, and the shows : 



Introduction 51 

The majesty of Juno in the clouds, 

And peering forth of Iris in the shrouds ; 

The ascent of lady Fame, which none could spy. 

Nor they that sided her, dame Poetry, 

Dame History, dame Architecture too. 

And goody Sculpture, brought with much ado. 

To hold her up ! O shows, shows, mighty shows ! 

The eloquence of masques ! what need of prose 

Or verse, or prose t' express immortal you ? 

You are the spectacles of state, 'tis true, 

Court-hieroglyphics, and all arts afford, 

In the mere perspective of an inch-board ; 

You ask no more than certain politic eyes, 

Eyes, that can pierce into the mysteries 

Of many colours, read them and reveal 

Mythology, there painted on slit deal. 

Or to make boards to speak ! There is a task ! 

Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque. 

Pack with your peddling poetry to the stage, 

This is the money-got mechanic age. 

To plant the music where no ear can reach, 

Attire the persons, as no thought can teach 

Sense, what they are, which by a specious, fine 

Term of [you] architects, is called Design ; 

But in the practised truth, destruction is 

Of any art, besides what he calls his. 

Vv^hither, O whither will this tireman grow ? 

His name is ;§Kr;vo7roio?, we all know, 

The maker of the properties ; in sum, 



52 Milton's Minor Poems 

The scene, the engine ; but he now is come 

To be the music-master ; tabler too ; 

He is, or would be, the main Dominiis Do — 

All of the work, and so shall still for Ben, 

Be Inigo, the whistle, and his men. 

He's warm on his feet, now he says ; and can 

Swim without cork : why, thank the good Queen Anne. 

I am too fat to envy, he too lean, 

To be worth envy ; henceforth I do mean 

To pity him, as smiling at his feat 

Of lantern-lerry, with fuliginous heat 

Whirling his whimsies, by a subtilty 

Sucked from the veins of shop-philosophy. 

What would he do now, giving his mind that way, 

In presentation of some puppet-play. 

Should but the king his justice-hood employ, 

In setting forth of such a solemn toy ? 

How would he firk ^ like Adam Overdo,^ 

Up and about ; dive into cellars too, 

Disguised, and thence drag forth Enormity, 

Discover Vice, commit Absurdity : 

Under the moral, show he had a pate 

Moulded or stroked up to survey a state 1 

O wise surveyor, wiser architect. 

But wisest Inigo ; who can reflect 

On the new priming of thy old sign-posts, 

Reviving with fresh colours the pale ghosts 

Of thy dead standards ; or with marvel see 

1 To move quickly. 2 in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. 



Introduction 53 

Thy twice conceived, thrice paid for imagery, 

And not fall down before it, and confess 

Almighty Architecture, who no less 

A goddess is, than painted cloth, deal board, 

Vermilion, lake, or crimson can afford 

Expression for ; with that unbounded line, 

Aimed at in thy omnipotent design ! 

What poesy e'er was painted on a wall, 

That might compare with thee ? What story shall, 

Of all the worthies, hope t' outlast thy own. 

So the materials be of Purbeck stone ? 

Live long the feasting-room ! And ere thou burn 

Again, thy architect to ashes turn ; 

Whom not ten fires, nor a parliament can 

With all remonstrance, make an honest man. " 



VI . Lycidas 

" In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, 
unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on 
the Irish Seas, 1637 ; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin 
of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height." This 
brief introduction to the contribution made by John Mil- 
ton to the collection of elegies in honour of Edward King, 
his successful rival for the Trinity College fellowship, was 
inserted in the 1645 edition of his poems, and is still the 
best account and the most adequate criticism of the poem. 
Lycidas is less dramatic than Arcades, and Arcades is 
hardly dramatic enough to merit the name of pastoral as 



54 Milton's Minor Poems 

the Italians understood it. The sorrow it expresses is, 
indeed, dignified and intelligent, but it is courteous 
rather than lamentable, and too often the inteUigent 
dignity of sorrow is resented. The *' learned Friend " 
is, indeed, rarely bewailed, but the reader forgets all 
about the dead Edward King in growing sympathy with 
the living " Author " and his vision of a corrupted clergy. 
Milton had, to be sure, good authority for such blending 
of themes and forms. And he perhaps did well to limit 
his title to the term " monody." Theocritus of Syracuse 
depicted a country hfe whose ideals were as different 
from those of the actual goatherd as the simplicity he 
praised was remote from poverty and monotony. Virgil, 
while professing to employ the form of the Greek pasto- 
ral, openly advocated " a somewhat loftier strain." The 
Italians of the Renaissance introduced a vein of moraliz- 
ing and satire. Edmund Spenser had made his rustics 
natural philosophers and poets. Doctor Johnson and 
critics of his type can not or will not understand all this, 
and they will still be saying with him " passion runs not 
after remote allusions and obscure opinions," and " where 
there is leisure for fiction there is little grief." " Like, 
very like," but there may be great poetry. When the 
" sea of emotion " has " curdled into thoughts " the 
reader does not inquire too closely whether the "un- 
packing of the heart " has been necessary to the writer's 
existence or not, or even whether it has been spontane- 
ous and sincere. It is enough that it serves the reader's 
well being and ministers to his comfort and good estate. 



Introduction ^^ 

Milton wrote no less than the literal truth when he said : 
" You ask what I am thinking of ? So may the Good 
Deity help me; of immortality — I am pluming my 
wings and meditating flight." Of course this amounts 
to saying that Milton was writing great lyric poetry in 
motive, whatever the form adopted might seem to require. 
And perhaps it is not his least title to greatness that he 
could and did forget Edward King. For it must be 
remembered that here was no strong and intimate bond 
of personal friendship, such as existed between the young 
Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, nor such fabled poet-love 
"this side idolatry" as unites the names of Shelley and 
Keats, but an acquaintance fairly described probably as 
academic. Members of the same university. King was 
Milton's junior. There is no evidence that Milton was 
particularly drawn to King's person or interests. The 
assignment of a fellowship to King, for which Milton him- 
self was eligible, is even looked upon by some students 
of Milton as ground for coolness between them. There 
is clear evidence that the fellowship was awarded to King 
by royal influence and not in due course of academic 
appreciation. Probably Milton's own account is sufficiently 
accurate, when due allowance has been made for the 
large and remote phraseology characteristic of Milton's 
muse : 

" For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill ; 
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, 



56 Milton*s Minor Poems 

We drove a-field, and forth together heard 

"What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn, 

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 

Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. 

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute; 

Tempered to the oaten flute 

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 

From the glad sound would not be absent long; 

And old Damoetas loved to hear our song." 

Here certainly is described the dignified association of 
persons congenially and worthily occupied, but there is 
certainly nothing of the fellowship of kindred minds, 
still less of the love of attached hearts. Milton wrote 
very differently of his father and of Charles Diodati, 
when he wished to record personal friendship. 
• The memorial volume of which this poem was part 
appeared in 1638. It contained twenty-three poems in 
Latin and Greek, and thirteen English poems, with the 
title. Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King, 
Anno Dam., 1638. Other contributors to the memorial 
were Henry King, Henry More, the Platonist, and John 
Cleveland. 

Vn. The Story of the Text 

The visitor to the Library of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, is likely to have his attention called to the hand- 
somely bound volume of forty-seven manuscript pages, 
once described as " Milton's Juvenile Poems, etc., seem- 



Introduction 57 

ingly the original." The history of this volume is indi- 
cated by the Latin inscription on the first cover. 

Membra haec Erudissimi et paene Divini Poetae olim 
misere disjecta et passim sparsa, postea verb fortuitb 
Inventa et in tinum denub collecta a Carolo Mason ejus 
Col. Socio 6^ inter miscellanea 7'eposita, deinceps, ed, qua 
decuit, Religiojie servari voluit Thomas Clarke, nuperrime 
hujusce collegii nunc vero Medii Tejjtpli Londini Socius 

1736' 

[These fragments of a most learned and nearly divine 
poet, formerly miserably broken apart and scattered about, 
but afterwards by chance found and recently collated by 
Charles Mason, Fellow of the same College and replaced 
among the Miscellanies, are at last to be preserved with 
proper reverence as directed by Thomas Clarke, very 
recently of this College, now of the Middle Temple, 
London, 1736.] 

The earher history of the manuscripts themselves is 
partly a matter of conjecture, partly material of record or 
of well estabhshed tradition. As far back as the later 
years of Milton's student life at Cambridge, he had kept a 
notebook of the first drafts of his compositions in English, 
Latin, prose, and poetry. The first edition of his poems 
was advertised to be " printed by his true copies." Up 
to 1658 these manuscripts were in Milton's possession, the 
later work being in the handwriting of an amanuensis. 
These and certain other manuscripts came into the keep- 
ing of Milton's wife at his death in 1674, and were lost 
sight of. By some unknown means, Sir Henry Newton 



58 Milton*s Minor Poems 

Puckering, a considerable benefactor of the Trinity Col- 
lege Library, is believed to have obtained possession of 
this particular manuscript. Charles Mason, the Wood- 
vvardian Professor of Geology, and probably the person 
who best knew the Library, is the authority for the belief 
that the Milton manuscript was part of the collection of 
four thousand books and manuscripts given by Sir Henry 
Puckering in 1691 to the Trinity College Library. It is 
somewhat noteworthy that the catalogue by Bernard in 
1697 makes no mention of the Milton manuscript. When 
Mason discovered the leaves they were loose. After 
they were bound, as described on the first leaf of the 
cover, they were treated with too litde care. The volume 
was too often shown to visitors. They were allowed to 
handle it too freely, and the result was that some of the 
readings are illegible; some necessary patching and repair- 
ing has been roughly done, and a slip of paper contain- 
ing seventeen lines of emended reading for a passage in 
Counts has been lost. 

At present the manuscript is much more carefully 
treated. It is kept in a glass case and may be removed 
for examination only by permission from the Master and 
Fellows of Trinity College, and in the presence of one 
of the Fellows. 

With the generosity of true scholarship the Council of 
Trinity College determined to put this manuscript within 
the reach of a larger number of students than could 
hope to study it in their library, by a photographic and 
transHterated reproduction prepared under the superin- 



Introduction 59 

tendence of William Aldis Wright. The photographic 
work was done by Mr. A. G. Dew-Smith of Trinity Col- 
lege. The Preface, 1899, makes the following interesting 
statements and comments : 

" I thought I should do a greater service to students 
of Milton if, instead of merely recording the variations 
between the manuscript and the printed text, I enabled 
them to ascertain the variations for themselves. . . . The 
Arcades with which the manuscript begins, was probably 
written in 1633. . . . After Milton had written C^/;^//i- in 
1634, Lycidas in 1637 . . . he appears to have gone back 
to his first quire and made use of one of its blank pages 
for . . . three Sonnets . . . which belong to the period 
1 642-1 644 or 5. Pages 45, 46, and 47 are the work of 
three amanuenses, whose handwritings differ from each 
other and from the three handwritings which are not 
Milton's on the preceding pages. Among these six, both 
Peck and Warton profess to recognize five as the hand- 
writing of five different women. 1 see no reason to be- 
lieve that they are not all the work of men's hands. . . . 

" It would be a matter of regret if the publication of 
these facsimiles should have the same effect upon those 
who examine them which the sight of the originals ap- 
pears to have produced upon Charles Lamb. In a note 
which was at first appended to his Essay on Oxford in 
the Vacation, he says, ' I had thought of the Lycidas 
as of a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all its 
parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, I was shown the 
original copy of it, together with the other minor poems 



6o Milton's Minor Poems 

of the author, in the Hbrary of Trinity, kept like some 
treasure to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them 
in the Cam, or sent them after the latter Cantos of 
Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me 
to see the fine things in their ore ! interhned, corrected ! 
as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at 
pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, and just 
as good ! As if inspiration were made up of parts, and 
these fluctuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never go 
into the workshop of any great artist again.' Many nev- 
ertheless will find pleasure in contemplating the second 
thoughts of the poet, or even the third, which we are told 
by a prophet of the order are a riper first." 

These manuscripts are of the highest interest, not only 
to the curious hunter after reUcs of the past, but to the 
student of literary masterpieces in the making. Some of 
the ways of genius are not past finding out. The verses 
reproduced in a slightly reduced form for the frontispiece 
of this book are an interpolation made by Milton at the 
close of the one hundred and forty-first verse of the 
Lycidas. The new matter is connected with the main 
body of the poem by a heavy slanting stroke of the pen, 
and the words written in on the margin, " Bring the 
rathe," etc. 

The reproduction shows the various readings from a 
rejected trial form through succeeding tentatives until 
the final form of the poem, as the reader is familiar 
with it, was reached. The rejected form reads as 
follows : 



Introduction 6i 

Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies 

Collu colouring the pale cheeke of uninjoyd love 

and that sad floure that strove 

to vi^rite his owne woes on the vermeil graine 

next adde Narcissus y* still weeps in vaine 

the woodbine and y° pancie freak't w*** jet 

the glowing violet 

the cowslip wan that hangs his pensive head 

and every bud that sorrow's liverie weares 

let Daffadillies fill thire cups with teares 

bid Amaranthus all his beautie shed 

to strew the laureat herse, etc. 

The later stages appear thus : 

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies 
the tufted crowtoe and pale Gessamin 

ye 

the white pinke and ^ pansie freakt w"" jet 
the glowing violet the well attir'd woodbine 
the muske rose and the garish columbine 
w"^ cowslips wan that hang the pensive head 

X weare X wearM 

and every flower that sad escutcheon ^ beares imbroidrie beares 
bid Amaranthus all his beauties shed 
& let daffadillies fill thire cups w"" teares 
to strew, etc. 

Examination and comparison of the readings show : 

1. The lines originally " made sense." The inserted 
verses are therefore pure elaboration, as the passage 
concludes in verse 151 precisely as it did before the 
change. 

2. Milton prepared for the new material, or justified its 
insertion, after revision, by the change in verse 139, in the 



62 Milton's Minor Poems 

original draft, of the word " Bring " to the present one 
"Throw." 

3. The only feature of the passage that remains con- 
stant through all changes is the structure of the verse ; its 
framework or anatomy, and its vocal harmony. The 
movement of the lines affords a form of verbal counter- 
point of which the short line " The glowing violet " was 
the invariable factor. 

4. The verbal changes are made in the interests of 
sound and various suggested associations rather than of 
the combination of popular science and visual accuracy, 
known since Wordsworth's time as " love of Nature." 

5. The entire passage in its final form shows the tri- 
umph of the " mixture of a lie that ever gives pleasure " 
over the elements of pure thought and exact record. 

6. Milton's final preference is always for words that 
embody force rather than for those that express an 
appeal to the eyes exclusively. 

7. The main trend of change is toward the social and 
human aspect of life rather than toward the spectacular 
or sentimental. 

8. The whole passage, as an elaboration, affords an 
illustration of the dramatic factor in pastoral elegy. It 
illustrates Milton's lack of dramatic spontaneity, but his 
abounding sense of poetic propriety. Doubtless if Soph- 
ocles could have brought himself to this pass, he would 
have rejected and changed with as resolute conscience 
as that shown here. But Sophocles was not only classic 
but dramatic. 



Introduction 6^ 

9. The temper of the passage, the method of its 
construction, and the aims made evident by the changes 
accepted or rejected after trial show the extent to which 
Milton was really indebted to his study of Greek and 
Latin masterpieces. The student of the classics in Greek 
and Latin should compare carefully Milton's use of adjec- 
tives and verbs with that of his alleged models. 



lU^ti^^yyiM^x %K 



-4^ 



MILTON'S MINOR POEMS 

^^ PALLEGRO 

/ Hence, loatlijed Melancholy, 
J. Of Cerberus and blackestJVIidmght born 
In Stygian cave forlorn^ V t ^ 

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrielcs, and sights unholy ! 
Find out some uncouth ^ cell>i: 5 

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous ^ wings, 
And the night- raven sings ; 

There under ebon ^ shades and low-browed rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks. 

In dark (Cimmerian desert ever dwell. -■ ' i^o^ 

But come, thou Goddess fair and free, 
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, 
And by men heart-easing Mirth; 
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, 

With two sister Graces more, 15 

|=To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore : 
I Or whether — as some sager * singC* 
The frol\c wind that breathes the 'spring, 
'ZepKyf,"" with Aurora playing, 

As he met her once a-Mayingy 20 

1 Uncanny. 2 pearfuh ^ Black. MViser. 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — % 65 



66 Milton's Minor Poems 

There, on beds of violets blue, 

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 

Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, 

So buxom, bUthe, and debonair.^ ^_ 

■ --. Haste thee. Nymph, and bring with thee " 25 

'' Jest and youthful Jollity, 
/ Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, 

. Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, ucn^^ 

'%uch as hang on Hebe's cheek, ^^^ ^^ '<^^ * •** ^ \ 

And love to Hve in dimple sleek ; 30 

Sport that wrinkled Care derides. 

And Laughter holding both his sides. 

Come, and trip it as you go. 

On the hght fantastic ^ toe ; 

And in thy right hand lead with thee 35 

The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty ; 

And if I give thee honour due. 

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,^ ^^^ 

To Hve with her and hve with thee, 
^' In unreproved pleasures free ; < > j^o^ 

To hear the lark begin his flight, 

And, singing, startle the dull night, 

From his watch-tower in the skies. 

Till the dappled ^ dawn doth rise ; "'^^i^ '^ 

. / Then to come, in spite of sorrow^X"^^^]^ 45 

[ And at my window bid good-morro\^^^ 

rlwmigh the sweet-brier or the vine,\ \ 

1 Affable, gay and courteous. ^ Quaintly dancing. i 

' Company. * Variegated. 



L'Allegro 67 

Or the twisted eglarnm^ ; 
While the cock, with lively din, •r-^< 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin ; 50 

And to the stack, or the barn-door 
Stoutly struts his dames before : 
Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 
From the side of some hoar ^hill, r 55 

Through the high wood echoing shrill : 
i Sometime walking, not unseen, 

* By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 

Right against the eastern gate 
Where the great Sun begins his state, 60 

Robed in flames and amber light, 
The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; ^ 
While the ploughman, near at hand, 
Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 7 1 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe,''**^*''^ 65 

,j^ And the mower whets his scythe, 
"V And every shepherd tells his tale 
r Under the hawthorn in the dale.' 
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures. 
Whilst the landskip round it measures : 70 

Russet lawns and fallows ^ grey, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 
Mountains on whose barren breast ' 
Thie labouring clouds do often rest ; 

1 Old. 2 Adorned. 

•^ Plowed and harrowed, but uncropped ground. 




iiS\ Milton's Minor Poems . ^ 

.^-^ 

Meadows trim, with daisies pied, -^ 

Shallow brooks and rivers wide ; 

Towers and battlements it sees 

Bosomed high in tufted trees, v 

Where perhaps some beauty lies, 

The cynosure ^ of neighbouring eyes.-Jf- 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 

From betwixt two aged oaks, U/*^ ^ 

Where Cory^n and Thyrsis met ^^^Zy<^ 

Are at their savoury^ dinner set 

Of herbs and other country messes, 85 

Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses ; 

And then in haste her bower she leaves, 

With The?^tv1is to bind the sheaves ; ^ .jji 

Or, if the earlier season lead, ^.Jy^^^. • 

To the tanned haycock in the mea.d.^''^yM'^^^^> 

Sometimes, with secure delight, .^It^ >''-'' ^ 

The upland hajukts will invite, pv^^^ 

When the merry bells png round. 

And the jc^umi rj^ec^s^ sound 

To many a youth and many a maid :^[A/\J^^^ 

Dancing in the chequered shade,./'^'^^^ 

And young and old come forth to play 

On a sunshine holiday, 

Till the livelong daylight fail : 

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, f. 

With stories told of many a feat, ' 



A>^ 



^ Spotted. 2 Centre of attraction. ^ Appetizing. 

* Sun-dried. ^. Merry hddles. 



•i 




L' Allegro 6^ 

How Faery Mab the junkets ^ eat. 

She was pinched and pulled, she said ; j^^Ju 

And he, by Friar's lantern led, ^^^t^^^^^''^ "^ 

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 

To earn his cream-bowl duly set. 

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 

His shadowy_£ail hath threshed the corn 

That ten day-labourers could not end| 

Then lies him down, the lubber fiend>^^ 

And, stretched out all the chimney's length, 

Basks 2 at the fire his hairy strength, y 

And crop-full out of doors he flings 

Ere the first cock his matin ^ rings. Q 

rf Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 115 

By whispering winds soon lulled asleep^_ 

Towered cities please us then, 

And the busy hum of men. 

Where throngs of knights and barons bold. 

In weeds N>f peace, high triumphs hold, 120 

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 

Rain influence,^ and judge the prize 

Of wit or arms, while both contend 

To win her grace whom all commend. 
/yf'^fK^er^^'iet^ymen oft appear^^^ i^r"^ 125 

Q In saffron ^ robe, with taper clear. 

And pomp, and feast, and revelry. 

With mask, and antique pageantry,^ 

1 Sweetened curds. ^ Makes comfortable. » Morning song. 

* Clothes. ^ Give strength. « Yellow. '^ Show. 



>f 



70 Milton's Minor Poems 

Such sights as youthful poets dream -t<^ 

On summer eves by haunted stream. ^^ 130 
Then to the well- trod stage anon,*'*^^ 
If Jonson's learned sock ^ be on, 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. "^ 

And ever, against eating cares, 135 

Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
-'Married to immortal verse, 
-. - / Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 

In notes with many a winding hout-^^^*-'*"^'^'^^ 

Of hnkedp sweetness lon^ dr^wn out 140 

With ^(^nton heed and ^fHHy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running, 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony ; 

That Orpheus' self may heave his head 145 

From golden slumber on a bed 

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 

Such strains as would have won the ear 

Of Pluto to have quite set free 

His half-regained Eurydice. 150 

These delights if thou canst give, 

Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 



1 The low shoe worn in comedy. ^ Turn. 



II Penseroso 71 

IL PENSEROSO 

Hence, vain deluding Joys, • 

The brood of FSfty'witliout father bred ! 
How little you bested,^ 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 
Dwell in some idle brain, ; L/>*^ — 5 

And fancies fOnd with gaudy shapes possess, , 

As thick and nmnbexiess - - - 

As the gay mdiesthat people the sunbeams, 
.' Or likest hovering dreams,^'^'"'''-"*-'^^^^ /stXs^' j - 
^^^A^ The fickle pensioners of Morpweus' train. uo\ 
^ But hail, thouGoddess sage and holy,/'*--^'*-*- 



Hail, diwnest Melancholy ! 

Whose saintly visage is too bright ^^y-*']^^^^-'*'^'''*'*''*^ 
ft/^g^-tv-<^ To hit the sense of human sight, 

And therefore to our weaker view 15 

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue ;aa-'-|»lZ£^>«>^ 



Black, but such as in esteem /Vti^^ 
^Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
To set her beauty's praise above 20 

The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended. '^^ 
Yet thou art higher /ar descended : 
Thee bright-haired Wsta long of yore 
To solitary. Saturn bore ; 
His daughter she ; in Saturn's reign 25 

1 Help. 



72 / Milton's Minor P#em$ 

Such mixture was not held a stain. oiLm.^ >afi-*'^ 

Oft in glimmering Wwersand glades ^^.^^ ^JL^^t-^-u^-^c^ 
\] He met her, and in secret shades 
Of woody T^Vmmost grove, 
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 3^ 

-i Come, pensive Nun, aevoufand pure, 
(V'^'>^ Sober, ste^^^, and demure, ^-i-vv^M"**--'^' 
All in a robe of darkest grain,^ 
Flowing vyith majestic train, -..ci^ 

And '^aWe 'stole ^ of cypress lawn'^^^'^^ 35 

Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
Come ; but keep thy wonted state, 
With even step and mysing gait,-^»^^i-K.e>tJu.UAj/V-^ 
And looks commercing'^ with the skies, 
/lAyyJl'^^ Thy rapt ^ soul sitting in thine eyes : 40 

There, held in holy passion still, 
Forget thyself to marble,^ till 
With a sad leaden downward cast ^ 
Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 
And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,^-^ 45 
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 
And hears the Muses in a ring 
Aye round about Jove's altar sing ; 
And add to these retired Leisure, 
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 50 

But, first and chiefestj with thee bring 
Him that yon ^ s'Sar^f on golden wing, 

1 Colour. 2 Mantle. * Communing, * Absorbed. 

^ Turn to marble. ^ Look. "^ Yonder. 





11 Pensemso Ja. 73 




Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, . , 

The Cherub Contempla^Knt^^i^r:^!,^^^^'"^ 
^^And the mute Silenc^hist^ along, V^ 

J^^^^^Lv^'^ess - Philomel will deign-iarsong — - 
1^ iS ^ In her sweetest, saddest plight, j^ 

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, S^^^^JL^ ^^f^^ 

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke 4 V^^^ 

Gently o'er the accustomed oak. """^r 60 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee, cnaui^ress, oft the woods among 

I woo, to hear thy even-song; 

And, missing thee, I walk unseen \^ 

On the dry smooth- shaven gree n, 

To behold the wandering moon, 

Riding near her highest noon,^ v.^^'v-^ 

Like one that had been led astray 

Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 70 

And oft, as if her head she bowed, 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew sound 

Over some wide- watered shore, 75 

Swinging slow with sullen roar ; i^'*''^'''*^ 

Or, if the air will not permit, i] 

Some still removed place will fit, 

Where glowing emEers through the room t/^-^^ 

Teach light to c3fffi^pit a gloom, 80 

1 Stilled, hushed. ^ Unless. ^ Point, power, prime. 



4 



i;^ 



74 Milton's Minor Poems 

Far from all resort of mirth, 

Save the cricket on the hearth, 

Or the bellm an's ^ drowsy charm V; 

To bless the doors from nightly harm 

Or let my lamp at midnight hour 

Be seen in some high lonely tower 

Where I may oft outwatch the B 

With thrice-great Hermes, or un 

The spirit of Plato, to unfold 

What worlds or what vast regions hold 90 

The. immortal mind that hath forsook 

Her mansion in this fleshly nook j3p-=i>'^-^ 

And of those demons that are founa 

In fire, air, flood, or underground. 

Whose power hath a true consent 95 

With planet or with element. 

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 

In sceptred paU * come sweeping by, 

Presenting Thebes or Pelops' line, 

Or the tale of Troy divine, 100 

Or what — though rare — of later age 

Ennobled hath the buskined ^ stage. "^ 

But, O sad Virgin ! that thy power 

Might raise Musseus from his bower ; 

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 

Such notes as, warbled to the string, 

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 

^ Watchman's. ^ Bring back. ^ place. 

* Royal mantle. ^ From the high boot worn in tragedy. 



m\( 



II Penseroso 75 



And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 

Or call up him that left half-told 

The story of Cambuscan bold, no 

Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 

And who had Canace ^to wife, 

That owned the vir^u^s ^ ring and glass, 

And of the wondrous horse of brass 

On which the Tartar king did ride ; 115 

And if aught else great bardsbeside )^iLJ^<9^^<^^- 

In ^age and solem.n tunes have sung, (/ 

Of turneys and of trophies hung. 

Of forests, and enchantments drear, 

Where more is meant than meets the ear. \> G^ 

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career. 

Till civil-suited ^ Morn appear, 

Not tricked aiyi frounced ^ as she was wont 

With the Attic boy to hunt, ^^.^^^^d^i^ 

But kerchieft in a comely cloud, (] '•^ 125 

While rocMi^vinds are piping loud, 

Or ushered with a shower still, 

When the gust hath blown his fill. 

Ending on the rustling leaves, . ' 

With minute "^-rlrnp s from off the eaves, ^^'^^■^'ijo 

And when the sun begins to fling 

His flaring beams, me. Goddess, bring 

To arched walks of twilight groves, . 

And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, yj'jrC^ ^ ^'^'^'^'^'^t, 

1 Magic. 2 Plain-dressedJ 

^ Flounced. * Slow. 



76 Milton's Minor Poems 

Of pine or monumental oak, 135 

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke i 

Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,^ J^^ 
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt^ ^^*^^ 
There in close covert by some brook, 
Where no profaner eye may lookj^^>^,„.,^ 140 
Hide me from day's garish ^ eyep^^ii«»-i,^'^ ^ 

While the bee with honeyed thigh, 
That at her flowery work doth sing, 
And the waters murmuring. 

With such consort^ as they keep, 145 

"^^^gfiitice the dewy-feathered Sleep. 
>^^^ And let some strange mysterious dream 

Wave at his wings, in airy stream • ^ 

Of lively portraiture displayed, -^^ cM^^-'v-n"^ , 

Softly on my eyelids laid; 150 

And, as I wake, sweet music breathe 

Above, about, or underneath, 

Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, ^^ 

Or the unseen Genius of the wood. ftx/u"-^ 

But let my due * feet never fail y,^"^^^ ^55 

To walk the studious cloister's pale,*^ 

And love the high e9r?wwea ^ roof. 

With antique pillars massy-proof,^ 

And storied windows richly dight,^ 

Casting a dim religious Hght. 160 

There let the pealing organ blow 

1 Lofty. 2 Glaring, staring. ^ Company, * Punctual. 

6 Limit. ^ Arched. "^ Strong. « Adorned. 



II Penseroso 77 

To the full-voiced quire below, 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine .ear. 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, i/f'tJZ.^iy^^O'T^Po^ 165 

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. ^ '\i 



^e^ i^nd may at last my weary age 



Find out the peaceful hermitage, 
^kc'The hairy gown and mossy cell, 

Where I may sit and rightly spell 170 

Of every star that Heaven doth show, 
And every herb that sips the dew. 
Till old experience do attain 
To something like prophetic strain. 
These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 175 

I And I with thee will choose to live. 



78 Milton*s Minor Poems 



ARCADES 

Part of an Entei-tainment presented to the Countess Doivager of 
Derby, at Harefield, by some Noble Persojis of her Family ; 7uho 
appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toivard the seat of 
state, with this song: 

I. SONG 

Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look ! 
What sudden blaze of majesty 
Is that which we from hence descry,^ 
Too divine to be mistook? 

This, this is she 5 

To whom our vows and wishes bend ; - 
Here our solemn search hath end. 

Fame, that her high worth to raise 

Seemed erst^ so lavish and profuse, 

We may justly now accuse lo 

Of detraction from her praise ; 

Less than half we find expressed ; 

Envy bid conceal the rest. 

Mark what radiant state she spreads 
In circle round her shining throne, 15 

Shooting her beams like silver threads ; 
This, this is she alone. 

Sitting hke a goddess bright 

In the centre of her light. 
1 See. 2 xurn, 3 Once. 



Arcades 79 

Might she the wise Latona be, 20 

Or the towered Cybele, 

Mother of a hundred gods? 

Juno dares not give her odds ; 

Who had thought this chme had held 

A deity so unparalleled? 25 

As they come forward the Genius of the Wood appears, 
and, turning toward them, speaks. 

Genius. Stay, gentle Swains, for though in this disguise, 
I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes ; 
Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung 
Of that renowned flood so often sung, 
Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice 30 

Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse ; 
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood. 
Fair silver-buskined ^ Nymphs, as great and good, 
I know this quest of yours and free intent 
Was all in honour and devotion meant 35 

To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, 
Whom with low reverence I adore as mine, 
And with all helpful service will comply 
To further this night's glad solemnity, 
And lead ye where ye may more near behold 40 

What shallow-searching - Fame hath left untold ; 
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone. 
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon : 

1 Silver-shod. 2 Careless. 



8o Milton's Minor Poems 

For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power 

Of this fair wood, and Hve in oaken bower, 45 

To nurse the saphngs tall, and curP the grove 

With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove ; 

And all my plants I save from nightly ill 

Of noisome ^ winds and blasting vapours chill ; 

And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 50 

And heal the harms of thwarting ^ thunder blue, 

Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, 

Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites. 

When evening grey doth rise, I fetch'* my round 

Over the mount and all this hallowed ground ; 55 

And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 

Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasselled horn 

Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 

Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 

With puissant^ words and murmurs made to bless. 60 

But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness 

Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I 

To the celestial Sirens' harmony, 

That sit upon the nine infolded spheres. 

And sing to those that hold the vital ^' shears, 65 

And turn the adamantine spindle round 

On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie. 

To lull the daughters of Necessity, 

And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 70 

1 Adorn. 2 Harmful. ^ Opposing. 

^ Complete. ^ Powerful. ^ Cutting the thread of life. 



Arcades 8 1 

And the low world in measured motion draw, 

After the heavenly tune, which none can hear 

Of human mould with gross unpurged ear ; 

And yet such music worthiest were to blaze ^ 

The peerless height of her immortal praise 75 

Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit. 

If my inferior hand or voice could hit 

Inimitable sounds. Yet, as we go, 

Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show 

I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80 

And so attend ye toward her glittering state ; 

Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,^ 

Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem. 

II. SONG 

O'er the smooth enamelled^ green 

Where no print of step hath been, 85 

Follow me, as I sing 

And touch the warbled string. 
Under the shady roof 
Of branching elm star-proof,* 

Follow me. 90 

I will bring you where she sits, 
Clad in splendour as befits 

Her deity. 
Such a rural Queen 
All Arcadia hath not seen. 95 

^ Celebrate. ^ Descent. ^ Glossy. * Stars can not pierce it. 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 6 



Milton's Minor Poems 

III. SONG 

Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more 

By sandy Ladon's UHed banks ; 
On old Lycseus or Cyllene hoar 

Trip no more in twihght ranks ; 
Though Erymanth your loss deplore, loo 

A better soil shall give ye thanks. 
From the stony Maenalus 
Bring your flocks, and live with us ; 
Here ye shall have greater grace, 
To serve the Lady of this place. 105 

Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, 
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her. 
' Such a rural Queen 

All Arcadia hath not seen. 



C O M U S 

A MASK 
PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634 

BEFORE 

JOHN, EARL OF BRIDGEWATER 
THEN PRESIDENT OF WALES 



THE PERSONS 



t 



The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis. 

Com us with his Crew. 

The Lady. 

First Brother. 

Second Brother. 

Sabrina, the Nymph. 

The Chief Persons which presented were: — 

The Lord Brackley. 

Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother. 

The Lady Alice Egerton. 



COMUS 

The First Scene discovers a wild wood 
The Attendant Spirit descends or enters 

Spirit, Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes 
Of bright aerial spirits live, insphered 
In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 5 

Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, 
Confined and pestered in this pinfold^ here. 
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, 
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, 
After this mortal change, to her true servants lo 

Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. 
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire 
To lay their just hands on that golden key 
That opes the palace of eternity. 

To such my errand is ; and but for such 15 

I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds ^ 
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.^ 

But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway 
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream, 

1 Pound for cattle. 2 Heavenly clothes. ^ Defiling earth. 
85 



86 Milton's Minor Poems 

Took in^ by lot, 'tvvixt high and nether^ Jove, 20 

Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles 

That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 

The unadorned bosom of the deep ; 

Which he, to grace his tributary gods, 

By course commits to several government, 25 

And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns 

And wield their httle tridents. But this Isle, 

The greatest and the best of all the main, 

He quarters to his blue-haired deities ; 

And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 30 

A noble Peer of mickle - trust and power 

Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide 

An old and haughty nation proud in arms : 

Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, 

Are coming to attend their father's state, 35 

And new-intrusted sceptre.^ But their way 

Lies through the perplexed "* paths of this drear wood. 

The nodding horror of whose shady brows 

Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger ; 

And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40 

But that, by quick command from sovran Jove 

I was dispatched for their defence and guard ; 

And hsten why ; for I will tell you now 

\Miat never yet was heard in tale or song. 

From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 45 

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape 
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, 

1 Lower. 2 Great. ^ Power. ■* Tangled. 



Comus 87 

After the Tuscan mariners transformed, 

Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,* 

On Circe's island fell. — Who knows not Circe, 50 

The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup 

Whoever tasted lost his upright shape. 

And downward fell into a grovelling swine ? — 

This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks 

With ivy berries wreathed and his blithe youth, 55 

Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son 

Much like his father, but his mother more, 

Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named j 

Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age. 

Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 

At last betakes him to this ominous ^ wood, 

x\nd, in thick shelter of black shades embowered. 

Excels his mother at her mighty art ; 

Offering to every weary traveller 

His orient^ liquor in a crystal glass, 65 

To quench the drouth "* of Phoebus ; which as they taste — 

For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst — 

Soon as the potion works, their human countenance, 

The express resemblance of the gods, is changed 

Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70 

Or ounce ^ or tiger, hog, or bearded goat. 

All other parts remaining as they were. 

And they, so perfect is their misery. 

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, 

1 Pleased. 2 Enchanted. ^ Bright. * Thirst. 

^ Snow leopard or mountain panther. 



88 Milton's Minor Poems 

But boast themselves more comely than before, 75 

And all their friends and native home forget, 

To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. 

Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove 

Chances to pass through this adventurous ^ glade, 

Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80 

I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,^ 

As now I do. But first I must put off 

These my sky-robes spun out of Iris' woof, 

And take the weeds and likeness of a swain ^ 

That to the service of this house belongs, 85 

Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song, 

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar. 

And hush the waving woods ; nor of less faith, 

And in this office of his mountain watch 

Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 

Of this occasion. But I hear the tread 

Of hateful steps ; I must be viewless now. 

CoMUS enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass 
in the other ; with him a rout of monsters, headed like 
sundry sorts of ivild beasts, but othei'wise like men and 
women, their apparel glistering ; they come in making 
a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hafids. 

Conms. The star that bids the shepherd fold 
Now the top of heaven doth hold ; 
And the gilded car of day 95 

1 Dangerous. ^ Guidance. * Servant, 



Comus 89 

His glowing axle doth allay ^ 

In the steep ^ Atlantic stream ; 

And the slope sun his upward beam 

Shoots against the dusky pole, 

Pacing toward the other goal 100 

Of his chamber in the east. 

Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast. 

Midnight shout and revelry, 

Tipsy dance and jolhty ! 

Braid your locks with rosy twine,^ 105 

Dropping odours, dropping wine. 

Rigour now is gone to bed ; 

And Advice with scrupulous head, 

Strict Age, and sour Severity, 

With their grave saws,^ in slumber lie. no 

We, that are of purer fire. 

Imitate the starry quire. 

Who, in their nightly watchful spheres. 

Lead in swift round the months and years. 

The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,* 115 

Now to the moon in wavering morrice ^ move ; 

And on the tawny ^ sands and shelves ^ 

Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. 

By dimpled brook and fountain-brim 

The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim 120 

Their merry wakes and pastimes keep : 

What hath night to do with sleep? 

J Temper. 2 Bright. ^ Garland. * Proverbs. ^ Fishes. 
* Dance. "^ Yellow. ^ Beaches, 



90 



Milton's Minor Poems 



Night hath better sweets to prove ; 

Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. 

Come, let us our rites begin ; 125 

'Tis only daylight that makes sin, 

Which these dun ^ shades will ne'er report. 

Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, 

Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame 

Of midnight torches burns ! mysterious dame, 130 

That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb 

Of Stygian darkness spets - her thickest gloom, 

And makes one blot of all the air ! 

Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, 

Wherein thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend 135 

Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end 

Of all thy dues be done, and none left out ; 

Ere the blabbing" eastern scout. 

The nice'* Morn on the Indian steep. 

From her cabined loophole peep, 140 

And to the tell-tale Sun descry^ 

Our concealed solemnity. 

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground 

In a light fantastic round. 

The Measure 

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace 145 

Of some chaste footing near about this ground. 
Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees; 

1 Dark. 2, Spits. ^ Revealing. * Accurate, modest. 
^ Make plain. 



Comus 91 

Our number may affright. Some virgin sure — 

For so I can distinguish by mine art — 

Benighted in these woods ! Now to my charms, 150 

And to my wily trains ; ^ I shall ere long 

Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed 

About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl 

My dazzling spells into the spongy air, 

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, 155 

And give it false presentments, lest the place 

And my quaint^ habits breed astonishment. 

And put the damsel to suspicious flight ; ., 

Which must not be, for that's against my course. 

I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160 

And well-placed words of glozing ^ courtesy 

Baited with reasons not unplausible, 

Wind me into the easy-hearted man, 

And hug him into snares. When once her eye 

Hath met the virtue ^ of this magic dust, 165 

I shall appear some harmless villager 

Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.* 

But here she comes ; I fairly*^ step aside, 

And hearken, if I may her business hear. 

T/ie Lady enters 

Lady. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, i;o 
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound 

1 Enticements. 2 Unusual. ^ Deceptive. * Power. 
^ Work. 6 Promptly. 



92 Milton's Minor Poems 

Of riot and ill-managed merriment, 

Such as the jocund^ flute or gamesome pipe 

Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds/ 

When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, 175 

In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, 

And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth 

To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence 

Of such late wassailers ^ yet, oh ! where else 

Shall I inform my unacquainted feet 180 

In the Wind mazes of this tangled wood ? 

My brothers, when they saw me wearied out 

With this long way, resolving here to lodge 

Under the spreading favour * of these pines. 

Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket side 185 

To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit 

As the kind hospitable woods provide. ,, N^ 

jThey left me then when the grey-hooded EvenV^v 

l ^ke a sad votarist^ in palmer's weed, j^ 

Roselrom the hindmost wheels of Phcebus' wain. 190 

But where they are, and why they came not back, 

Is now the labour of my thoughts. Tis Hkeliest 

They had engaged their wandering steps too far ; 

And envious darkness, ere they could return. 

Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, 195 

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious ® end, 

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars 

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps 

^ Joyous. 2 Country folk. ^ Revellers. * Shade. 
* Devotee. ^ Wicked. 



Comus 93 

With everlasting oil to give due light 
To the misled and lonely traveller ? 200 

This is the place, as well as I may guess, 
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth 
Was rife,^ and perfect in my listening ear ; 
Yet nought but single ^ darkness do I find, 
^hat might this be? A thousand fantasies 205 

Begin to throng into my memory. 
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, 
And airy tongues that syllable men's names 
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 210 

The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
By a strong^ siding champion. Conscience. — 
O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, 
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings. 
And thou unblemished form of Chastity ! 215 

I see ye visibly, and now believe 
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance. 
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, 
To keep my life and honour unassailed. — . ' 220 

Was I deceived, or did a sable * cloud v!^ 
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?, '^v 
I did not err : there does a sable cloud ^^ 
Turn forth her silver lining on the night, ^ 
' And casts a gleam over this tufted grove^ 225 

I cannot hallo to my brothers, but 

1 Full. 2 Complete. ^ Helpful. * Dark. 



94 Milton's Minor Poems 

Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest 
I'll venture ; for my new-enlivened spirits 
Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off. 

Song. 

Sweet Echo, sweetest 7iymph, that liv'st unsee^i 230 

Within thy airy shell 
By sloiv Meander's margent ^ green, 
And in the violet- embroidered vale 
Where the love-lorn, nightiiUgale 

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ; 235 

Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair 
That likest thy Narcissus^ are ? 

O, if thou have 

Hid them in some flowery cave, 

Tell me but where, 240 

^^xjeet Queen of Parley? Daughter of the Sphere I 
So mafst th jPSe traits la ted to the skies, 
And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies. 

Enter Comus 

Comus, Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould 
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? 245 

Sure something holy lodges in that breast, 
And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
To testify his hidden residence. 
How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 

1 Bank. 2 Speech. 



Comus 95 

At every fall smoothing the raven down 

Of darkness till it smiled ! I have oft heard 

My mother Circe with the Sirens three, 

Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, 

Culling ^ their potent herbs and baleful drugs, 255 

Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul 

And lap it in Elysium ; Scylla wept. 

And chid her barking waves into attention. 

And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. 

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 260 

And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; 

But such a sacred and home-felt delight. 

Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 

I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, 

And she shall be my queen. — Hail, foreign wonder ! 265 

Whom, certain these rough shades did never breed. 

Unless the goddess that in rural shrine 

Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song 

Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog 

To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood. 270 

Lady, Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise 
That is addressed to unattending ears. 
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift ^ 
How to regain my severed company, 
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo 275 

To give me answer from her mossy couch. 

Comus, What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus? 

Lady. Dim darkness and this leavy labyrinth.'^ 
1 Picking. '^ Effort. ^ Maze, a puzzle of paths. 



96 Milton's Minor Poems 

Comus. Could that divide you from near-ushering^ 
guides? 

Lady. They left me weary on a grassy turf. 280 

Comus, By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why? 

Lady. To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring. 

Comus. And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?. 

Lady. They were but twain, and purposed quick 
return. 

Comus. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. 285 

Lady. How easy my misfortune is to hit ! 

Comus. Imports^ their loss; beside^ the present 
need? 

Lady, No less than if I should my brothers lose. 

Comus. Were they of manly prime, or youthful 
bloom ? 

Lady. As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips. 290 

Comus. Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came. 
And the swinked^ hedger at his supper sat. 
I saw them under a green manthng vine. 
That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 295 

Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots ; 
Their port^ was more than human, as they stood. 
I took it for a faery vision 
Of some gay creatures of the element,^ 
That in the colours of the rainbow live, 300 

And play i' the plighted ^ clouds. I was awe-strook,^ 

1 Going close before. ^ Means. ^ More than. ^ Tired. 

5 Carriage. ® Heavens. ^ Woven, plaited, folded. ^ Struck. 



Comus 97 

And as I passed I worshipped. If those you seek, 
It were a journey Hke the path to Heaven 
To help you find them. 

Lady. Gentle villager, 

What readiest way would bring me to that place ? 305 

Comus. Due west it rises from this shrubby point. 

Lady. To find that out, good shepherd, I suppose, 
In such a scant allowance of starlight, 
Would overtask the best land-pilot's art, 
Without the sure guess of well-practised feet. 310 

Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green. 
Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood, 
And every bosky bourn from side to side, 
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood ; 
And if your stray attendance be yet lodged 315 

Or shroud ^ within these limits, I shall know 
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted ^ lark 
From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise, 
I can conduct you. Lady, to a low 

But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 

Till further quest. 

Lady. Shepherd, I take thy word, 

And trust thy honest-offered courtesy. 
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds. 
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls 
And courts of princes, where it first was named, 325 

And yet is most pretended. In a place 
Less warranted ^ than this, or less secure, 

1 Sheltered, 2 Low-resting or dwelling. ^ Answered for. 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 7 



98 Milton's Minor Poems 

I cannot be, that I should fear to change it. 
Eye ^ me, blest Providence, and square ^ my trial 
To my proportioned strength ! Shepherd, lead on. 330 

\_Exeunf\ 

Enter the two Brothers 

Elder Brother. Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, 
fair moon. 
That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,^ 
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, 
And disinherit ^ Chaos, that reigns here 
In double night of darkness and of shades ; 335 

Or if your influence be quite dammed up 
With black usurping mists, some gentle taper, 
Though a rush candle from the wicker hole 
Of some clay habitation, visit us 

With thy long levelled rule ^ of streaming light, 340 

And thou shalt be our Star of Arcady 
Or Tyrian Cynosure ! 

Second Brother. Or if our eyes 
Be barred that happiness, might we but hear 
The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,^ 
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 345 

Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 
Count the night watches to his feathery dames, 
'Tvvould be some solace yet, some little cheering 
In this close dungeon of innumerous ^ boughs. 

1 Watch. 2 Suit. ^ Blessing. * Deprive of rights. 
^ Beam. ^ Twig cots. "^ Innumerable. 



Comus 



99 



But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister ! 350 

Where may she wander now, whither betake her 

From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles? 

Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now. 

Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm 

Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. 355 

What if in wild amazement and affright, 

Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp 

Of savage hunger, or of savage heat ! 

Elder Brother. Peace, brother : be not over-exquisite ^ 
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils ; 360 

For grant they be so, while they rest unknown, 
What need a man forestall his date of grief. 
And run to meet what he would most avoid ? 
Or if they be but false alarms of fear, 
How bitter is such self-delusion ! 365 

I do not think my sister so to seek,^ 
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, 
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, 
As that the single want of light and noise — 
Not being in danger, as I trust she is not — 370 

Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts. 
And put them into misbecoming plight. 
iSVirtue could see to do what Virtue would 
^ By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
5 Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 375 

^ Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 

Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, 
1 Over-careful. 2 Incapable. 

LofC. 



lOO Milton's Minor Poems 

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 

That, in the various bustle of resort, 

Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired. . y 380 
'''irHe that has light within his own clear breast 
^j^May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day : 
.•^ • But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 

Benighted walks under the mid- day sun ; 

Himself is his own dungeonj^ 

Secofid Brother. 'Tis most true 385 

That musing Meditation most affects 

The pensive secrecy of desert cell, 

Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, 

And sits as safe as in a senate-house ; 

For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 

His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, 

Or do his grey hairs any violence? 

But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree 

Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard 

Of dragon- watch with unenchanted eye, 395 

To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit 

From the rash hand of bold Incontinence. 

You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps 

Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den. 

And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope 400 

Danger will wink ^ on Opportunity, 

And let a single helpless maiden pass 

Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste. 

Of night or loneliness it recks me not ; 
1 Shut its eyes to. 



Comus loi 

I fear the dread events that dog ^ them both, 405 

Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person 
Of our unowned ^ sister. 

Elder Brother. I do not, brother, 

Infer as if I thought my sister's state 
Secure without all doubt or controversy ; 
Yet, where an equal poise " of hope and fear 410 

Does arbitrate the event, my nature is 
That I incline to hope rather than fear, 
And gladly banish squint ^ suspicion. 
My sister is not so defenceless left 

As you imagine ; she has a hidden strength 415 

Which you remember not. 

Second Brother. What hidden strength, 

Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that ? 

Elder Brother. I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength 
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own. 
'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity : 420 

She that has that is clad in complete steel. 
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen. 
May trace ^ huge forests and unharboured ^ heaths. 
Infamous '^ hills, and sandy perilous wilds, 
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, 425 

No savage fierce, bandite,^ or mountaineer 
Will dare to soil her virgin purity. 
Yea, there where very desolation dwells, 
By grots and caverns shagged ^ with horrid shades, 

1 Follow. 2 Deserted. ^ Chance. ^ Looking sidewise, sinister. 
^ Traverse. ^ Inhospitable. '^ Strange. ^ Robber. ^ Made scrubby. 



^ 



I02 Milton^s Minor Poems 

She may pass on with unblenched^ majesty, 430 

Be it not done in pride or in presumption. 

Some say no evil thing that walks by night, 

In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen. 

Blue meagre- hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost 

That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 435 

No goblin or swart ■" faery of the mine. 

Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. 

Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call 

Antiquity from the old schools of Greece 

To testify the arms of chastity ? 440 

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow, 

Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, 

Wherewith she tamed the brinded'* lioness 

And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought 

The frivolous ^ bolt of Cupid ; gods and men 445 

Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. 

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield 

That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin. 

Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, 

But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 

And noble grace that dashed brute violence 

With sudden adoration and blank awe? 

So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 

That, when a soul is found sincerely so, 

A thousand liveried angels lackey ^ her, 455 

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 

1 Unharmed. 2 Thin. 3 Dark. 

* Streaked, brindled. ^ Light. ' ^ Serve. 



Comus 103 

And in clear dream and solemn vision 

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 

Begin to cast a beam ^ on the outward shape, 460 

The unpolluted temple of the mind, 

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 

Till all be made immortal. But when lust, 

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, 

But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 465 

Lets in defilement to the inward parts. 

The soul grows clotted by contagion, 

Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose 

The divine property of her first being. 

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470 

Oft seen in charnal^ vaults and sepulchres, 

Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave. 

As loth to leave the body that it loved. 

And linked itself by carnal sensualty 

To a degenerate and degraded state. 475 

Second Brother. How charming is divine Philosophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
But musical as is Apollo's lute. 
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets. 
Where no crude surfeit reigns. 

Elder Brother. List ! list ! I hear 4S0 

Some far-off hallo break the silent air. 

Seco7id Brother. Methought so too ; what should it be ? 

Elder Brother. For certain, 

1 Light. ^ Containing corpses. 



I04 Milton's Minor Poems 

Either some one, like us, night-foundered ^ here. 

Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst, 

Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 4S5 

Second Brother. Heaven keep my sister ! Again, again, 
and near ! 
Best draw, and stand upon our guard. 

Elder Brother. I'll hallo : 

If he be friendly, he comes well ; if not, 
Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us ! 

E?iter the Attendant Spirit, habited like a Shepherd 

That hallo I should know. What are you ? speak. 490 
Come not too near ; you fall on iron stakes else. 

Spirit. What voice is that? my young Lord? speak 
again. 

Second Brother. O brother, 'tis my father's Shepherd, 
sure ! 

Elder Brother. Thyrsis ! whose artful strains have oft 
delayed 
The huddling - brook to hear his madrigal,^ 495 

And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale. 
How camest thou here, good swain? hath any ram 
Shpped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam. 
Or stragghng wether the pent flock forsook? 
How couldst thou find this dark sequestered ^ nook ? 500 

Spirit. O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, 
I came not here on such a trivial toy ^ 
As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth 
1 Disabled. 2 Hurrying. ^ Song. * Lonely. ^ Pretext. 



Com 



us 



105 



Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth 

That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought 505 

To this my errand, and the care it brought. 

But oh ! my virgin Lady, where is she? 

How chance she is not in your company ? 

Elder B?'other. To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without 
blame 
Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510 

Spirit. Ay me unhappy ! then my fears are true. 

Elder Brother. What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee 
briefly show. 

Spi7'it. I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous, — 
Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance, — 
What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, 515 
Storied of old in high immortal verse 
Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles. 
And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell ; 
For such there be, but unbelief is blind. 

Within the navel ^ of this hideous wood, 520 

Immured " in cypress shades a sorcerer dwells. 
Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus, 
Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries ; 
And here to every thirsty wanderer 
By sly enticement gives his baneful ^ cup, 525 

With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison 
The visage quite transforms of him that drinks. 
And the inglorious Ukeness of a beast 
Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage "* 

1 Middle. 2 ghut up. ^ Harmful. * Inscription. 



io6 Milton's Minor Poems 

Charactered in the face. This have I learnt 530 

Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts ^ 

That brow- this bottom glade ; whence night by night 

He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl 

Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey, 

Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 535 

In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers. 

Yet have they many baits and guileful spells 

To inveigle ^ and invite the unwary sense 

Of them that pass unweeting ^ by the way. 

This evening late, by then the chewing flocks 540 

Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb 

Of knot-grass dew-besprent/^ and were in fold, 

I sat me down to watch upon a bank 

With ivy canopied and interwove 

With flaunting honeysuckle, and began, 545 

Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy. 

To meditate^ my rural minstrelsy, 

Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close 

The wonted roar was up amidst the woods. 

And filled the air with barbarous dissonance ; 550 

At which I ceased, and listened them a while. 

Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 

Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds, 

That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep. 

At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 555 

Rose Hke a steam of rich distilled perfumes, 

1 Small fields. 2 Overhang. ^ Lure. ^ Unthinking. 
^ Besprinkled. ^ Practise. 



Comus 107 

And stole upon the air, that even Silence 

Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might 

Deny her nature, and be never more, 

Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, 560 

And took in strains that might create a soul 

Under the ribs of Death ; but oh ! ere long 

Too well I did perceive it was the voice 

Of my most honoured Lady, your dear sister. 

Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear ; 565 

And * O poor hapless nightingale,' thought I, 

* How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare ! ' 

Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste. 

Through paths and turnings often trod by day, 

Till guided by mine ear, I found the place, 570 

Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise — 

For so by certain signs I knew — had met 

Already, ere my best speed could prevent. 

The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey ; 

Who gently asked if he had seen such two, 575 

Supposing him some neighbour villager. 

Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed 

Ye were the two she meant ; with that I sprung 

Into swift flight, till I had found you here ; 

But further I know not. 

Second Brother. O night and shades, 580 

How are ye joined with Hell in triple knot. 
Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin. 
Alone and helpless ! Is this the confidence 
You gave me, brother? 



io8 Milton's Minor Poems 

Elder Brother. Yes, and keep it still ; 

Lean on it safely : not a period 585 

Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats 
Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 
Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm : 
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt. 
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled ; 590 

Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm 
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory : 
But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
And mix no more with goodness, when at last, 
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 595 

It shall be in eternal restless change 
Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail. 
The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on ! 
Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven 600 

May never this just sword be lifted up ; 
But for that damned magician, let him be girt 
With all the grisly^ legions that troop 
Under the sooty ^ flag of Acheron, 

Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms 605 

'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out. 
And force him to return his purchase ^ back. 
Or drag him by the curls to a foul death. 
Cursed as his life. 

Spirit Alas ! good venturous youth, 

I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise ; ^ 610 

1 Grim. "^ Black, smoky. ^ Prey, ^ Adventure. 



L.omus 109 

But here thy sword can do thee httle stead.^ 
Far other arms and other weapons must 
Be those that quell the might of hellish charms. 
He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints, 
And crumble all thy sinews. .. 

Elder Brother. Why, prithee, Shepherd, 615 

How durst thou then thyself approach so near 
As to make this relation? 

Spirit. Care and utmost shifts 

How to secure the Lady from surprisal 
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad, 
Of small regard to see to,^ yet well skilled 620 

In every virtuous plant and healing herb 
That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray. 
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing ; 
Which when I did, he on the tender grass 
W^ould sit and hearken even to ecstasy, 625 

And in requital ^ ope his leathern scrip. 
And show me simples ■* of a thousand names, 
TeUing their strange and vigorous faculties. 
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root. 
But of divine effect, he culled me out. 630 

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 
But in another country, as he said. 
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil : 
Unknown, and Hke esteemed, and the dull swain 
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon / 635 

And yet more raed'cinal is it than that Moly 

1 Good. 2 Look upon. ^ Return. * Herbs. ^ Patched shoes. 



no Milton's Minor Poems 

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 

He called it Hsemony, and gave it me, 

And bade me keep it as of sovran use 

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp, 640 

Or ghastly Furies' apparition. 

I pursed^ it up, but little reckoning made. 

Till now that this extremity compelled ; 

But now I find it true, for by this means 

I knew the foul enchanter, though disguised, 645 

Entered the very Hme-twigs - of his spells. 

And yet came off. If you have this about you — 

As I will give you when we go — you may 

Boldly assault the necromancer's'^ hall; 

Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood 650 

And brandished blade rush on him : break his glass, 

And shed the luscious Hquor on the ground : 

But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew 

Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high. 

Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke, 655 

Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.'* 

Elder Brother. Thyrsis, lead on apace ; I'll follow thee. 
And some good angel bear a shield before us ! 

The Scene chattges to a stately palace^ set out with all 
maimer of deliciousness ; soft music ^ tables spread with 
all dainties. CoMUS appears ivith his rabble, and the 
Lady set in an eiichanted chair ; to whom he offers his 
glass, which she puts by, and goes about to rise. 

1 Treasured. ^ Twigs smeared with birdlime for catching birds. 
* Magician's. * Retreat. 



Comus III 

Comus. Nay, Lady, sit ; if I but wave this wand, 
Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, 660 

And you a statue, or as Daphne was. 
Root-bound, that fled Apollo. 

Lady. Fool, do not boast ; 

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind 
With all thy charms, although this corporal rind ^ 
Thou hast immanacled ^ while Heaven sees good. 665 

Comus. Why are you vexed. Lady ? why do you frown ? 
Here dwell no frowns nor anger ; from these gates 
Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures 
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 
When the fresh blood grows lively and returns 670 

Brisk as the April buds in primrose season. 
And first behold this cordial julep ^ here. 
That flames and dances in his ciystal bounds. 
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed. 
Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone 675 

In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena 
Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. 
Why should you be so cruel to yourself, 
And to those dainty hmbs which Nature lent 680 

For gentle usage and soft delicacy ? 
But you invert the covenants of her trust. 
And harshly deal, hke an ill borrower. 
With that which you received on other terms ; 
Scorning the unexempt * condition 685 

^ Bodily form. ^ Enchained. ^ Sweet drink. * Universal. 



112 Milton's Minor Poems 

By which all mortal frailty must subsist, 
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, 
That have been tired all day without repast, 
And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, 
This will restore all soon. 

Lady. 'Twill not, false traitor ! 690 

'Twill not restore the truth and honesty 
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with hes. 
Was this the cottage and the safe abode 
Thou told'st me of ? What grim aspects are these. 
These oughly ^-headed monsters ? Mercy guard me ! 695 
Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver ! 
Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence 
With visored- falsehood and base forgery? 
And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here 
With liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute ? 700 

Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets, 
I would not taste thy treasonous offer. (None / '■ 
But such as are good men can give good things ; 
And that which is not good is not delicious 
To a well-governed and wise appetite. 705 

Comus. O foolishness of men ! that lend their , ears 
To those budge ■' doctors of the Stoic fur. 
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub. 
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence ! 
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth ^\o 

With such a full and unwithdrawing hand. 
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks, 

1 Ugly. '^ Armed, masked. ^ Pampered, solemn. 



Comus 113 

Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, 
But all to please and sate ^ the curious taste ? 
And set to work millions of spinning worms, 715 

That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk 
To deck her sons ; and that no corner might 
Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins 
She hutched - the all- worshipped ore and precious gems 
To store her children with. If all the world 720 

Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, 
Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,^ 
The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised. 
Not half his riches known, and yet despised ; 
And we should serve him as a grudging master, 725 

As a penurious niggard of his wealth, 
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons. 
Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, 
And strangled with her waste fertility : 
The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with 
plumes, 730 

The herds would over-multitude their lords, 
The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought dia- 
monds 
Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, 
And so bestud with stars, that they below 
Would grow inured ^ to light, and come at last 735 

To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. 
List, Lady ; be not coy, and be not cozened ^ 
With that same vaunted name, Virginity. 

1 Satisfy. 2 Hoarded. ^ Coarse cloth. ^ Used. ^ Cheated. 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 8 



114 Milton's Minor Poems 

r Beauty is Nature's coin ; must not be hoarded, 
But must be current ; and the good thereof 740 

Consists in mutual and partaken bHss, 
Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself. 
If you let slip time, Hke a neglected rose 
It withers on the stalk with languished head. 
Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown 745 

In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities. 
Where most may wonder at the workmanship. 
It is for homely features to keep home ; 
They had their name thence : coarse complexions 
And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply 750 

The sampler and to tease the huswife's wool. 
What need a vermeil ^-tinctured Hp for that, 
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn? 
There was another meaning in these gifts : 
Think what, and be advised ; you are but young yet. 755 

Lady. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips 
In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler 
Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes, 
Obtruding false rules pranked ^ in reason's garb. 
I hate when Vice can bolt ^ her arguments, 760 

And Virtue has no tongue to check her pride. 
Impostor ! do not charge most innocent Nature, 
As if she would her children should be riotous 
With her abundance. She, good cateress,* 
Means her provision only to the good, 765 

That live according to her sober laws 

1 Crimson. ^ Dressed up. ^ Make fast. * * Provider. 



Comus 115 

And holy dictate of spare Temperance. 
If every just man that now pines with want 
Had but a moderate and beseeming share 
Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury 770 

Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, 
Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed 
In unsuperfluous even proportion, 
And she no wit ^ encumbered with her store : 
And then the Giver would be better thanked, 775 

His praise due paid ; for swinish Gluttony 
Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, 
But with besotted base ingratitude 
Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? 
Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 

Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words 
Against the sun-clad power of chastity. 
Fain would I something say — yet to what end ? 
Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend 
The sublime notion and high mystery 785 

That must be uttered to unfold the sage 
And serious doctrine of Virginity ; 
And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know 
More happiness than this thy present lot. 
Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, 790 

That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence ; 
Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. 
Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth 
Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits 
1 Whit. 



ii6 Milton's Minor Poems 

To such a flame of sacred vehemence 795 

That dumb things would be moved to sympathize, 
And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake. 
Till all thy magic structures reared so high 
Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head. 

Co7nus. She fables not. I feel that I do fear 800 

Her words set off by some superior power ; 
And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew 
Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove 
Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus 
To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble, 805 

And try her yet more strongly. — Come, no more ! 
This is mere moral babble, and direct 
Against the canon ^ laws of our foundation. 
I must not suffer this : yet 'tis but the lees 
And setthngs of a melancholy blood. 810 

But this will cure all straight ; one sip of this 
Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight 
Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste. — 

The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass 
out of his hand, and break it against the ground; his 
rout fnake sigji of resistance, but are all driven in. 
The Attendant Spirit co^nes in. 

Spii'it. What ! have you let the false enchanter scape ? 
O, ye mistook ! ye should have snatched his wand, 815 
And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed 

1 Fundamental, 



Comus 117 

And backward mutters of dissevering power, 

We cannot free the Lady that sits here 

In stony fetters fixed and motionless. 

Yet stay, be not disturbed : now I bethink me, 820 

Some other means I have which may be used. 

Which once of MeUboeus old I learnt, 

The soothest ^ shepherd that e'er piped on plains. 

There is a gentle nymph not far from hence, 
That with moist curb^ sways the smooth Severn stream : 825 
Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure ; 
Whilome ^ she was the daughter of Locrine, 
That had the sceptre from his father Brute. 
She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit 
Of her enraged stepdame Guendolen, 830 

Commended her fair innocence to the flood 
That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course. 
The water-nymphs that in the bottom played 
Held up their pearled wrists and took her in, 
Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall ; 835 

Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head. 
And gave her to his daughters to imbathe 
In nectared lavers ■* strewed with asphodil. 
And through the porch and inlet of each sense 
Dropped in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 

And underwent a quick immortal change. 
Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains 
Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve 
Visits the herds along the twihght meadows, 

1 Wisest. 2 Watery rein. ^ Once. ^ Basins. 



Ii8 Milton's Minor Poems 

Helping all urchin blasts ^ and ill-luck signs 845 

That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, 

Which she with precious vialed ^ liquors heals ; 

For which the shepherds at their festivals 

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, 

And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream S50 

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.^ 

And, as the old swain said, she can unlock 

The clasping charm and thaw the numbing spell. 

If she be right invoked in warbled song ; 

For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift 855 

To aid a virgin, such as was herself, 

In hard-besetting need. This will I try, 

And add the power of some adjuring verse. 

Song. 
Sab7'ina faii% 
Listen where thou art sitting . 860 

Under the glassy ^ cool, translucent^ wave, 

In twisted braids of lilies k7iitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair ; 
Listen for dear honoui-'s sake^ 
Goddess of the silver lake, 865 

Listen and save ! 

Listen, and appear to us, 

In name of great Oceanus ; 

By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, 

^ Goblin blights. ^ Kept or stored up in a vial. ^ Asphodels. 
* Transparent. 



Comus 



119 



And Tethys' grave majestic pace ; 870 

By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, 
And the Carpathian wizard's hook ] 
By scaly Triton's winding shell, 
And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell ; 
By Leucothea's lovely hands, 875 

And her son that rules the strands ; 
By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet. 
And the songs of Sirens sweet ; 
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, 
And fair Ligea's golden comb, 880 

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks 
Sleeking her soft alluring locks ; 
By all the nymphs that nightly dance 
Upon thy streams with wily glance ; 
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 885 

From thy coral-paven bed. 
And bridle in thy headlong wave, 
Till thou our summons answered have. 
Listen and save ! 

Sabrina rises^ attended by Water-nymphs, and sings 

By the rushy-fringed bank, 890 

Where grow the willow and the osier dank, 

My sliding chariot stays, 
Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen ^ 
Of turkis blue, and emerald greeii, 

1 Blue gloss. 



I20 Milton's Minor Poems 

That in the channel strays ; 895 

Whilst from off the waters fleet 
Thus I set my prititless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head. 
That bends not as I tread. 

Gentle swain, at thy request 900 

/ am here. 

Spirit. Goddess dear, 
We implore thy powerful hand 
To undo the charmed band 

Of true virgin here distressed, 905 

Through the force and through the wile 
Of unblessed enchanter vile. 

Sabrina. Shepherd, 'tis my office best 
To help ensnared chastity. 

Brightest Lady, look on me. ' 910 

Thus I sprinkle on thy breast 
Drops that from my fountain pure 
I have kept of precious cure ; 
Thrice upon thy finger's tip. 

Thrice upon thy rubied lip : 915 

Next this marbled venomed ^ seat, 
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, 
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. 
Now the spell hath lost his hold ; 
And I must haste ere morning hour 920 

To wait in Amphitrite's bower. 

1 Poisoned. 



Comus 121 

Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat 

Spif-it. Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
Sprung of old Anchises' line, 
May thy brimmed waves for this 
Their full tribute never miss 925 

From a thousand petty rills 
That tumble down the snowy hills ; 
Summer drouth or singed air 
Never scorch thy tresses fair, 

Nor wet October's torrent flood 930 

Thy molten^ crystal fill with mud ; 
May thy billows roll ashore 
The beryl and the golden ore ; 
May thy lofty head be crowned 
With many a tower and terrace round, 935 

And here and there thy banks upon 
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. — 

Come, Lady, while Heaven lends us grace. 
Let us fly this cursed place, 

Lest the sorcerer us entice 940 

With some other new device. 
Not a waste or needless sound 
Till we come to holier ground ! 
I shall be your faithful guide 

Through this gloomy covert ^ wide ; 945 

And not many furlongs thence 
Is your father's residence, 

1 Fluid. 2 Grove. 



122 Milton's Minor Poems 

Where this night are met in state 

Many a friend to gratulate ^ 

His wished presence, and beside 950 

All the swains that there abide 

With jigs and rural dance resort. 

We shall catch them at their sport, 

And our sudden coming there 

Will double all their mirth and cheer. 955 

Come, let us haste ; the stars grow high. 

But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky. 

The Scene changes, presentmg Ludlow Town and the 
President's Castle; the?i come in Country Dancers, 
after the?n the Attendant Spirit, with the two Brothers 
and the Lady. 

Song 
Spirit. Back, shepherds, back I enough yotir play 
Till next sunshine holiday. 

He7'e be, without duck or nod, 960 

Other trippings to be trod 
Of lighter toes, and such court guise 
As Mercury did first devise 
With the mi7icing Dryades 
On the lawns and on the leas. 965 

This second Song presents them to their Father and 
Mother 
Noble Lord and Lady bright, 
I have bi'ought ye new delight: 
1 Greet with joy. 



Comus 113 

Here behold so goodly grown 

Three fair branches of your oivn. 

Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970 

Their faith, their patience, and their truth, 

And sent them here through hard assays ' 

With a crown of deathless pj-aise. 

To triumph in victorious dance 

O'er sensual folly and intemperance. 975 

The da f ices elided, the Spirit epiloguizes 

Spirit. To the ocean now I fly, 
And those happy climes that lie 
Where day never shuts his eye, 
Up in the broad fields of the sky. 
There I suck the liquid air 980 

All amidst the gardens fair 
Of Hesperus and his daughters three 
That sing about the golden tree 
Along the crisped ^ shades and bowers 
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring ; 9S5 

The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours 
Thither all their bounties bring. 
There eternal Summer dwells, 
And west winds with musky wing 
About the cedarn alleys fling 990 

Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 
Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odorous banks, that blow 
1 Crinkled edged. 



124 Milton's Minor Poems 

Flowers of more mingled hue 

Than her purfled ^ scarf can shew, 995 

And drenches with Elysian dew — 

List, mortals, if your ears be true ! — 

Beds of hyacinth and roses, 

Where young Adonis oft reposes, 

Waxing well of his deep wound 1000 

In slumber soft, and on the ground 

Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. 

But far above in spangled sheen 

Celestial Cupid her famed son advanced 

Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced 1005 

After her wandering labours long, 

Till free consent the gods among 

Make her his eternal bride, 

And from her fair unspotted side 

Two blissful twins are to be born loio 

Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn. 

But now my task is smoothly done : 

I can fly, or I can run 

Quickly to the green earth's end. 

Where the bow'd welkin - slow doth bend, 1015 

And from thence can soar as soon 

To the corners of the moon. 

/■' Mortals, that would follow me, 
1' Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
\ She can teach ye how to climb 1020 

1 Embroidered or worked. 2 Heaven. 



Comus 125 



Higher than the sphery chime ; ^ 
Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself wpuld stoop to her. 

'^J/V'-^ " 1 Music of the spheres. 



\Mx£XL^^-^^^-^- 



LYCIDAS 

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend^ unfortunately 
drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and 
by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their 
height. 

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere/ 

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 

And with forced fingers rude 

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 5 

Bitter constraint and sad occasion de:ar 

Compels me to disturb your season due ; 

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime^ 

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.^ 

Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew 10 

Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. 

He must not float upon his vvatory bier 

Unwept, and welter ^ to the parfcWg^ wind. 

Without the meed of some melodious tear. 

Begin, then. Sisters of the sacred well«,„^ 15 

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ; 
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse ; 
So may some gentle Muse 

1 Withered. 2 Equal. 3 RqH about. 

126 



Lycidas-/ 127 

With lucky words favour my destined urn,^ 20 

And as he passes turn, 

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud ! 

For we were ilursed upon the self-same hill, 
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill ; ' 

Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 25 

Under the opening eyehds of the Morn, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 
What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn. 
Battening - our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 30 

Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. 
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute ; 
Tempered^ to the oaten flute 
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 
From the glad sound would not be absent long, 35 

And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. 

But, oh ! the heavy change, now thou art gone, 
Now thou art gone and never must return ! 
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, 
With wild thyme and the gadding* vine o'ergrown, 40 
And all their echoes mourn. 
The willows and the hazel copses green 
Shall now no more be seen 
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose. ' 45 

Or taint-worm to the weanHng^ herds that graze, 

1 Appointed grave. 2 Feeding. ^ In time. 

* Wandering. 5 Newly weaned. 



il8 Milton's Minor Poems 

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear 

When first the white-thorn blows ; 

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.,:' 

Where were ye. Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. 
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. 
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 55 

Ay me, I fondly dream ! 

Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? 
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore. 
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son. 
Whom universal nature did lament, 60 

When by the rout that made the hideous roar 
His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? 

Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 65 

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? 
Were it not better done, as others use. 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade. 
Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair? 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise — 70 
That last infirmity of noble mind — 
To scorn delights and live laborious days; 
But the fair guerdon^ when we hope to find. 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
1 Reward. 



^ 



Lycidas » 129 

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 75 

And slits the thin-spun life. * But not the praise,' 

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears ; 

* Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 

Nor in the glistering foil ^ 

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 80 

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 

As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 

Of some much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.' 

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, 85 

Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, 
That straii-fl heard was of a higher mood; 
But now my oat proceeds, 
And listens to the Herald of the Sea 
That came in Neptune's plea. 90 

He asked the waves, and asked the felon ^ wind?. 
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? 
And questioned every gust of rugged wings 
That blows from off each beaked promontory. 
They knew not of his story ; 95 

And sage Hippotades their answer brings. 
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed : 
The air was calm, and on the level brine 
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. 
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100 

Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark, ; . 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 

1 Leaf, as in gold or tin foil. 2 Thievish. 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 9 



ijo Milton's Minor Poems 

^ Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing ^ slow, 
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, 
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 105 

Like to that sanguine ^ flower inscribed with woe. 

* Ah ! who hath reft,' quoth he, ' my dearest pledge? ' 
Last came, and last did go. 

The Pilot of the Galilean lake ; 

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain — no 

The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. ^JaA) 

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : 

* How well could I have spared for thee, young swain. 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 

Creep and intrude and cHmb into the fold ! 115 

Of other care they little reckoning make 

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 

And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 

A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least 120 

That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 

What recks it them? What need they? They are 

sped ; 
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their sprannel ^ pipes of wretched straw. 
The hungry^i^fe|) look up, and are not fed, 125 

But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy'' paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 

1 Walking. ^ Purple. ^ Hoarse, worthless. * Secret. 



Lycidas 131 

But that two-handed ^ engine at the door 130 

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.* 
■- Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past 
That shrunk tliy streams ; return, Sicihan Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. ' 135 

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
Oi\vhose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled " eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers 140 

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rathe ^ primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, 
The white pink and the pansy freaked ^ with jet. 
The glowing violet, 145 

The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, 
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head. 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed. 
And dafladillies fill their cups with tears, 150 

To strew the laureate ^ hearse where Lycid lies. 
For so, to interpose a little ease. 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, 
Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled : 155 

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 

1 Requiring two hands to wield it. 2 Variegated. ^ Early. 
* Marked. ^ Worthy of the laurel wreath, or laurel crowned. 



132 Milton's Minor Poems 

Where thou perhaps under the wheUning tide 

Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 

Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, , • - 

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, "^ ' '160 

Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 

Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. 

Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth. 

And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth I 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 165 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore ^ 170 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,. 
Where, other groves and other streams along, 
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 175 

And hears the unexpressive ^ nuptial song 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
There entertain him all the saints above. 
In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
That sing, and singing in their glory move, 180 

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, 
In thy large recompense,^ and shalt be good 

1 Metal. 2 Inexpressible. ' Reward. 



Lycidas *'*' 1^3 

To all that wander in that perilous flood. ^ 185 

Thus sang the uncouth ^ swain to the oaks and rills, 
While the still morn went out with sandals grey. 
He touched the tender stops of various quills, 
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay; -*>*/ 

And now the sun had stretched out^ all the hills, '^-^ 190 ^ 
And now was dropt into the western bay. 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue : 
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

1 Unknown. 2 Lengthened by shadow. 



NOTES 



L'ALLEGRO 

1. Loathed Melancholy. Milton had read and thought much 
on this subject. The student should notice that there is a genuine 
energy in the order and characterization that compensates for the 
conventionally languid associations of the words. See Milton's 
Paradise Lost, xi. 485, 486: "moping melancholy, And moon- 
struck madness." 

See also quotation from Bullein in More's Utopia, tr. by Robin- 
son, ii. 7, note, " Melancholy, that cold, dry, wretched, saturnine 
humour, creepeth in with a leane, pale, or swartysh colour, which 
reigneth upon solitarye, carefull-musyng men." 

See further. Burton's Anatomy of MelancJwly (Bohn's ed., vol. i. 
p. 9), The Author's Abstract, last stanza: 

" I'll change my state with any wretch, 
Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch ; 
My pain's past cure, another Hell, 
I may not in this torment dwell ! 
How desperate I hate my life, 
Lend me a halter or a knife ; 

All my griefs to this are jolly, 
Naught so damn'd as Melancholy." 

2. Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born. The natural his- 
tory of excessive Melancholy is presented with Milton's customary 
independence in the use of borrowed suggestion. Classical mythol- 
ogy makes Erebus the husband of Night. Cerberus was the dog of 
Pluto and guardian of Hades. 

135 



136 



Notes 



3. Stygian. An adjective used again by Milton, Paradise Lost, 
X. 453, meaning, of course, pertaining to the river Styx, and carry- 
ing the force of all the related associations of darkness, the under- 
world, and compulsion. See Spenser, Virgil's Gftat, 1. 437 : 

" Bold sure he was, and worthie spirite bore, 
That durst those lowest shadowes goe to see, 
And could beleeve that aiiie thing could please 
Fell Cerberus, or Stygian powres appease." 

5. Uncouth. The literal meaning of the word is indicated by 
its grammatical form — the negative of a past participle, meaning 
known, of an Old English verb. Here it means remote, secret. In 
other connections it means awkward, rude. The verb appears in 
Modern English only in this form. 

6. Jealous wings. The cause is here used for the effect. The 
brooding wings keep out intruders, even light and cheer. 

7. Night-raven. The night-heron or night-crow. See Shake- 
speare, Mtich Ado, ii. 3. 83 : "I pray God his bad voice bode no 
mischief. I had as hef have heard the night-raven, come what 
plague could have come after it." 

8. 9. And low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks. See 
the Century Dictionary for discussion of rag, ragged, rough, and 
rug. Are voices, clothes, sails, clouds, and roc/es all ragged in the 
same sense? 

10. Cimmerian. In Homer's Odyssey, xi. 14 (see Chapman's 
tr.), the people of the Cimmerians are described as dwelling in 
eternal cloud and darkness. In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2, occurs, "Neither is it sufficient to 
keep them blind and in Cimmerian darkness." See Spenser, Vir- 
gil's Gnat, 1. 370 : 

" I carried am into waste wildernesse, 
Waste wildernes, amongst Cyinerian shades, 
Where endless paines and hideous heavinesse 
Is round about me heapt in darksome glades." 



L'Allegro 137 

12. Yclept Euphrosyne. Yclept is used only once by Milton. 
It is the past participle of the Middle English verb clepen, to call. 
The Old English form of the verb was cleopian. The 7 is a variant 
spelling for the ge of the past participle, as in German. Milton 
uses the y incorrectly in his epitaph on Shakespeare, " Star- 
ypointing pyramid. " Euphrosyne (Mirth) was one of the three 
graces. Aglaia (Brightness) and Thalia (Bloom) were the others. 
They presided over the kind offices of life. 

14. Whom lovely Venus, etc. Milton here deserts the classic 
mythology and invents a genealogy more to his mind than the one 
that makes Mirth the daughter of Zeus. 

14. At a birth. See the Century Dictionary and Nesfield's 
English Gratju/iar for the use of a, the, an, one. 

17. As some sager sing. The use of the letter s should be 
noticed through this verse. For sager see // Penseroso, 1. 117. The 
order of words in the phrase gives sager something of the force of 
an adverb. The student should consider whether it is a permissible 
prose form. 

20. A-Maying. See the Century Dictionary and Nesfield's Eng- 
lish Grammar for this use of a. Compare a-fishing, a-courting, 
a-field, a- bed. 

24. So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Note the relation of 
vowels and consonants in this phrase. Buxom is used only twice 
by Milton. See Paradise Lost, ii. 842, but it was used in the sense 
of lively or brisk by Shakespeare in Hen. V., iii. 6. 28; in the 
sense of obedient by Gower, Confessio Amantis, ii. 221. In the 
Ancren Riwle it is spelled buksum. The Old English verb from 
which it is formed is bugan, to bow. This form does not appear 
in Old English, but is common in Middle English. Compare glad- 
sojue, ivinsome, darksome. Blithe means happy, through the orig- 
inal force of the adjective in Old English, Compare with blink 
and the associated idea in blican, to shine. See Burton's Anatomy 
of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 5, Subs. 5, for similar phrase, " I 
am a fatherless child, and want means, I am blithe and buxom, 



138 Notes 



young and lusty, but I have never a suitor." . . . See also Spen- 
ser's Prosopopoia : 

" So v^^ilde a beast so tame ytaught to bee, 
And buxome to his bands, is joy to see." 

Debonair is simply the French phrase in common use at the time, 
de bonne air, meaning, first, of good appearance; later, of pleasant 
manners, courteous, gay. The fashion of the time permitted a wide 
use of the idea in grammatical forms that have since become obso- 
lete, i.e. debonarity, debonairness. Debonairly still occurs now and 
then. Study this combination of words in connection with fair 
and free, 1. ii. 

27. Quips and Cranks. Quip seems to be of Welsh derivation, 
and means to move quickly, to whip. Lyly, Alexander and Cam- 
paspe, iii. 2 has, " Why, what's a quip ? Wee great girders call it 
a short saying of a sharp wit, with a better sense in a short word." 
Crank is probably from the Old English verb crincan, to bow, to 
fall, to bend. In the sense of a bending of speech, a conceit, it 
appears in all stages of English. Spenser's Prosopopoia has : 

" And with sharp quips joy'd others to deface. 
Thinking that their disgracing did him grace." 

28. Nods and becks. Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 2, Subs. 4, quotes and translates from 

Musseus : 

" With becks and nods he first began 
To try the wench's mind ; 
With becks and nods and smiles again 
An answer he did find." 

33. Trip it. Compare lord it and similar expressions. 
44. Dappled dawn. A word manufactured before Milton from 
dapple, a spot. The verb appears in Shakespeare's Much Ado, v. 

3-27. 

62. Dight. See Latin dictare, to prescribe. The Old EngHsh 
form is dihtan, to set in order. The full form of the participle is 



L'Allegro 139 

dighted. Beaumont and Fletcher use the abbreviated fomti of the 
verb, "And have a care you dight things handsomely." Ben Jonson 
and Edmund Spenser also use it. 

67. Tells his tale. This is Milton's, as vs^ell as many another 
writer's, way of saying, " counts his flock." Tells is from the Old 
English verb tellan, a weak verb formed from ialu^ a number, a 
tale. Compare "sings his song," "work the works," etc. See 
also // Penseroso, 1 70. 

6g. Straight. Compare straightaway. 

70. Landskip round. Compare " the country round." Skeat's 
note to the effect that Blount's Glossary, 1674, makes it clear that 
it was originally a painter's term to express 'all that part of a pic- 
ture which is not of the body or argument,' answering somewhat 
to the modern term background, is an error as far as Milton's use 
of the word is concerned. In the Old English paraphrase of the 
Scriptures, attributed to Csedmon, occurs the following, in the 
speech of Satan in Hell, " ic a ne geseah lathran landscipe," never 
have I looked upon a more hideous landscape. Neither the author 
of these words nor the supposed speaker could have had any inter- 
est in painter's slang. See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 4 : " with many pretty landskips and perspective 
pieces." 

71. Lawns and fallows. Lawns is a word of uncertain origin. 
It is perhaps a decorative variant of land. Old English fealu 
means yellow, applied to the colour of untilled ground, then became 
the name for the ground itself. 

75- Pied. Party-coloured, spotted. Does pied belong to 
" daisies " or to " meadows trim " ? 

80. Cynosure. Latin cynosura. The last of the three stars in 
the tail of the Lesser Bear is the pole star, the centre of attraction 
to the magnet. In the Greek word, the meaning is dogh tail. 

83. Corydon and Thyrsis. Conventional names for the conven- 
tional shepherds of pastoral poetry, taken, with other machinery of 
poetry, from the Greeks and Romans. 



140 Notes 



85. Phyllis. See note to 83, above. 

87. Bower. In the Old English this meant simply a woman's 
apartment. 

88. Thestylis, See note to 83, above. 

94. Jocund rebecks. Means merry Jiddles. Jocund is of French 
derivation and rebeck of French, or Italian, from the Persian. 

96. Chequered shade. The force peculiar to chequered here is 
felt probably, but is most interestingly accounted for in the history 
of the word. It is formed from check, a term used in the game of 
chess to call attention to the danger of the king. The Persian 
form, shah-mat, meant the king is dead. The English check comes 
through Old French. 

98. Sunshine holiday. Milton used this phrase again in the 
spirits' song in Comus. See also Shakespeare's Richard IF., iv. i. 
221, "And send him many years of sunshine days." Also Whit- 
tier's My Soul and /, "Summon thy sunshine bravery back, O 
wretched sprite ! " 

102. How Faery Mab the junkets eat. Fairy Mab is in folk 
and fairy lore the fairies' midwife. Shakespeare calls her Queen, 
and is the first to do so. Her duty is also to deliver the fancies of 
men and to make dreams by driving in her chariot over the sleeper. 
The form fairy Mab is the result of a misuse established long 
before Milton. Fairy means enchantment, as in Piers Plowman 
and in Chaucer. The term for elf is fay. Junkets were cream 
cheeses served on rushes. See Old French jonchec, a bundle of 
rushes. Finally it was any kind of sweetmeats, or a feast or merry- 
making. See Ben Jonson's The Satyr : 

" This is Mab, the Mistress-Faery, 
That doth nightly rob the dairy, 
And can hurt or help the cherning, 
As she please, without discerning. 



She that pinches country wenches, 
If they rub not clean their benches, 



L' Allegro 141 

And with sharper nails remembers 
When tliey rake not up their embers : 
But if so they chance to feast her, 
In a shoe she drops a tester." 

104, 105. Friar's lantern . . . drudging goblin. There is 
really no difficulty in this connection between the Friar's lantern 
and the drudging goblin. Friar's lantern was one of the names 
by which Goodfellow went, but it was also a name for the ignis 
faitiiis by which devils misled men. The whole passage is a poet- 
ical paraphrase of the elaborate classification and description of 
spirits in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
Subs. 2, from which the following interesting passages bearing on 
Milton's poem are quoted: "Fiery spirits or devils are such as 
commonly work by blazing stars, firedrakes, or ignes fatui ; which 
lead men often in fiumina aiit praecipitia, . . . Terrestrial devils 
are those Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fai- 
ries, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli, etc., which as they are most con- 
versant with men, so they do them most harm. . . . Some put our 
fairies Into this rank, which have been in former times adored with 
much superstition, with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail 
of clean water, good victuals, and the like, and then they should 
not be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be fortunate in 
their enterprises. ... A bigger kind there is of them, called with 
us Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those super- 
stitious times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood or do any 
manner of drudgery work. . . . Cardan holds, 'They will make 
strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh 
again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, 
shave men, open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, 
chests, sometimes appear in the likeness of hares, crows, black dogs, 
etc' . . . And so Hkewise those which Mizaldus calls Ambulones, 
that walk about midnight on great heaths and desert places, which 
(saith Lavater) * draw men out of the way, and lead them all night 
a bye-way, or quite bar them of their way; these have several 



142 Notes 

names in several places; we commonly call them Pucks." See also 
The Pranks of Puck, ascribed to Ben Jonson, cited by W. J. Rolfe. 
no. Lubber fiend. The form lobur occurs in Pie7-s Plowman. 
The word is probably of Celtic origin and meant drooping, ineffi- 
cient, clumsy. 

111. Chimney's length. The rhyme requires length; literally 
the word should be width. 

112. Basks. The interesting thing about this word is the 
doubt whether it is the reflexive of a verb meaning to hake or to 
bathe. The evidence seems stronger for the derivation from bathe. 

120. In weeds of peace. Weed means a garment. The 
Teutonic base is wad, to bind. 

120. High triumphs. The doublet of triumph is trump. Why 
did Milton use triumph ? 

122. Rain influence. The term influence is astrological in ori- 
gin. Note the use of rain in this connection. Cotgrave gives, 
Old French influence, " a flowing in, and particularly an influence, 
or influent course, of the planets; their virtue infused into, or their 
course working on, inferior creatures." 

125. Hymen. The god of marriage. See Jonson's /(yw^/m(?t. 

132. Jonson's learned sock. The sock was the low-heeled shoe 
worn in comedy. Jonson was noted for almost pedantic learning. 
See Spenser, An Hymne in Honour of Beautie : 

" What time this world's great workmaister did cast 
To make al things such as we now behold, 
It seemes that he before his eyes had plast 
A goodly Paterne, to whose perfect mould 
He fashioned them as comely as he could. 
That now so faire and seemely they appeare, 
As nought may be amended any wheare. 

" That wondrous Paterne, wheresoere it bee, 
Whether in earth layd up in secret store, 
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see 
With sinfuU eyes, for feare it do defiore, 



L'Allegro 143 

Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore ; 
Whose face and feature doth so much excel! 
All mortall sence, that none the same may tell, 

Thereof as every earthly thing partakes, 

Or more or lesse, by influence divine 

So it more faire accordingly it makes "... 

135. Eating cares. Horace, Ode I. 18. 4, has mordaces sollici- 
tudineSy and Dde II. ii. l8, curas edaces. Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 2, " When the patient of 
himself is not able to resist or overcome these heart-eating pas- 
sions." . . . 

136. Lydian airs. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 
2, Mem. 6, Subs. 3, says : " But to have all declamatory speeches 
in praise of divine Musick, I will confine myself to my proper sub- 
ject; besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other 
diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against Despair and Melancholy, 
and will drive away the Devil himself . . . Lewis the Eleventh, 
when he invited Edtvard the Fourth to come to Paris, told him 
that, as a principal part of his entertainment, he should hear sweet 
voices of children, lonick and Lydian tunes." 

139. Bout. Another spelling is bought. The word means a 
turning. The Gothic verb biugan, to bow or bend, gives the original 
sense. 

147. Elysian flowers. The Elysian fields were the abode of the 
blessed after death. Milton uses the term probably to suggest the 
blessing, beauty, and deathless charm of flowers not plucked on 
earth. 

151, 152. It is customary to point out the comparison that may 
be made between this concluding couplet and Marlowe's The Pas- 
sionate Shepherd to his Love : 

" If these delights thy mind may move, 
Then live with me and be my Love." 

Both are certainly fine poetry. 



144 Notes 



IL PENSEROSO 

I. Hence, vain deluding Joys. The opening verses of // Pen- 
seroso should be compared with those of V Allegro. The purpose 
artistically is the same, the means employed, similar; but the sug- 
gestions and associations are utterly different. 

3. Bested. This word, of Scandinavian origin, is usually in the 
participial form. Here it means assist, kelp. 

6. Fond. Here me^ns foolish. 

12. Divinest Melancholy. See Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, The Author's Abstract : 

" Methinks I hear, methinks I see, 
Sweet musick, wondrous melody. 
Towns, Palaces, and Cities fine ; 
Here now, tlien there ; the world is mine, 
Rare beauties, gallant Ladies shine, 
Whate'er is lovely or divine; 
All other joys to this are folly, 
None so sweet as Melancholy." 

14. To hit the sense. See Shakespeare's Antojiy and Cleo- 
patra, ii. 2. 217 : "A strange invisible perfume hits the sense." 

18. Prince Memnon's sister. The beautiful Ethiopian prince 
who came to help Priam was Memnon. Milton extends his fame to 
his sister — for what poetic ends? 

19. That starred Ethiop. Cassiope, the rival of the Nereids 
in beauty. Raised to heaven, she was made a constellation. 

23. Bright-haired Vesta. The virgin goddess of the hearth, 
one of the twelve great Olympians. 

24. Solitary Saturn. The Italic deity of social order and civili- 
zation. Ops, goddess of wealth, was the wife assigned him by 
classic mythology. Here again Milton has arranged a genealogy 
to suit himself and the purposes of his poem. 

30. While yet there was no fear of Jove. Milton evidently 



II Penseroso 145 

identifies Saturn with Cronus, thus suggesting the dethronement of 
the father by the son. Mythology makes Zeus the rebellious son 
of Cronus. Milton identifies Zeus with Jupiter. See Burton's 
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 3: "Saturn a 
man . . . did eat his own children, a cruel tyrant driven out of his 
kingdom by his son Jupiter, as good a god as himself." 

33. Grain. Colour. Kermes, like cochineal, were supposed to 
be berries or grains, and colours dyed with them were said to be 
grained, or ingrained. See the Century Dictionary. 

35. Stole. Scarf. 

35. Cypress lawn. The word cypress is of unknown origin. 
Lawn is perhaps a corruption of linon, an imported P'rench name 
of fine linen. 

42. Forget thyself to marble. Notice Milton's fondness for 
certain descriptive expressions. Cf. On Shakespeare, 14, and Comus, 
660. See also Ben Jonson's Underwoods, An Elegy on the Lady 
Jane Pawlet : 

" I am almost a stone ! 
, . . Alas, I am all marble! write the rest 
Thou wouldst have written, Fame, upon my breast: 
It is a large fair table, and a true." 

53. Fiery-wheeled throne. See Ezekiel x. 

54. Contemplation. See Comus, 377. See Burton's Anatomy 
of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 2, Subs. 6: "A most incom- 
parable dehght it is so to melancholize and build castles in the 
air. ... So delightsome those toys are at first, they could spend 
whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in 
such contemplations. ... I may not deny but that there is some 
profitable meditation, contemplation, and kind of solitariness to be 
embraced, which the Fathers so highly commended ... a Para- 
dise, an Heaven on earth, if it be used aright, good for the body 
and better for the soul : as many of those old Monks used it, to 
divine contemplations." . . . 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — lO 



146 Notes 

55. Hist. Probably the interjection enjoining silence used as a 
past participle. Notice the order of the so-called *' parts of speech " 
in this passage. 

59. Cynthia. A name for Artemis or Diana, the moon goddess, 
from her birthplace, Mount Cynthus in Delos. 

59. Dragon yoke. The reference here is astrological, not mytho- 
logical. The nodes of planets, especially of the moon, or the two 
points in which the orbits of the planets intersect the ecliptic, were 
called Dragon's head and tail, because the figure representing the 
passage of a planet from one node to the other was thought to 
resemble that of a dragon. Furthermore, there was an old northern 
constellation called Draco in the space now occupied by the Little 
Bear. Yoke is any bond of connection as well as the specific con- 
trivance for fastening draught animals together. The phrase is 
learned poetry for the moon lingers. 

74. Curfew. French, couvre-feu, fire cover. The bell calling 
for the covering of fires and the putting out of lights near eight 
o'clock. 

83. The bellman's drowsy charm. The old cry of the London 
bellman (or watch) at night was, Lanthorne and candle light. 
See Heywood's Edward IV., First Part, 1. circa 508, " no more 
calling of lanthorn and candle light." 

87. Outwatch the Bear. The constellation of the Bear does 
not set in the latitude of England. 

88. Thrice-great Hermes. A translation of the name Hermes 
Trismegistus given to the Egyptian Thoth. 

88. Or unsphera. Bring back to earth. 

go. What worlds or what vast regions hold, etc. Burton's 
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. I, Mem. 2, Subs. 9: "Others 
grant the immortality thereof (the soul), but they make many fabu- 
lous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the 
body, like Plato's Elysian Fields and that Turkey Paradise." 

93. And of those demons. Burton quotes and translates Aus- 
tin: ** They are confined until the day of judgment to this sublunary 



II Penseroso 147 

v/orld, and can work no farther than the four elements, and as God 
permits them. Wherefore of these sublunary Devils, though others 
divide them otherwise according to their several places and offices, 
Psellus makes Six kinds, fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, and subter- 
ranean Devils, besides those Fairies, Satyrs, Nymphs, etc." Again 
Burton cites in the Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i. Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
Subs. 2 : " Gregorius Tholosanus makes seven kinds of aetherial 
Spirits or Angels, according to the number of the seven Planets, 
Saturnine, Jovial, Martial, etc. The four elements were earth, air, 
fire, water." 

103. But, sad Virgin ! Tragedy. 

104. Musagus. An Attic poet whose name meant servant of 
the Muses, and who was fabled to have presided over the mysteries 
of Demeter at Eleusis, and to have written poems concerning them. 

109. Or call up him. Chaucer is meant here. He left the 
Squire's Tale unfinished. 

120. When more is meant than meets the ear. Allusion is 
here made to the allegory of Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

122. Civil-suited. Not starred or decorated. 

124. Attic boy. Cephalus. 

132. Goddess. What is the reference here? 

134. Sylvan. Sylvanus, the god of woodlands. 

161. Then let the pealing organ blow, etc. See Burton's 
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 3 : " In a 
word, it (music) is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, 
the Queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is an happy cure) ; 
and corporal tunes pacify our incorporal soul . . . and carries it 
beyond itself, helps, elevates, extends it." See Spenser's Epithala- 
fnion, 1. 218: 

" And let the roring Organs loudly play 
The praises of the Lord in lively notes ; 
The whiles, with hollow throates, 
The Choristers the joyous Antheme sing, 
That al the woods may answere, and their eccho ring." 



148 Notes 



Also Amoreiii, xxxix. : 

"A melting pleasance ran through evry part, 
And me revived witli hart-robbing gladnesse. 
Whylest rapt with joy resembling heavenly madnes, 
My soul was ravisht quite as in a traunce ; 
And feeling thence, no more her sorowes sadnesse, 
Fed on the fulnesse of that chearefuU glaunce." 

170. And rightly spell Of. This is a construction not uncom- 
mon in Burton's and in Milton's prose. It may be compared with 
tell of . It should further be noted that ^/and off zxo. variants, thus 
giving the form spell of a breadth of grammatical suggestion that 
was characteristic of Milton. See Burton's Anatojny of Melancholy y 
Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Sub. 13, . . . "brings him to Gnipho, the 
usurer's house at midnight, and after that to Eucratis ; whom they 
found both awake casting up their accounts, and telling of their 
money, lean, dry, pale, and anxious." . . . See Spenser's VirgiVs 
Gnat, 1. 273 : 

" For there huge Othos sits in sad distresse, 
Fast bound with serpents that him oft invades; 
Far of beholding Ephialtes tide, 
Which once assai'd to burne this world so wide." 



ARCADES 



20. The wise Latona. Latona was the mother of Apollo and 
Diana. The adjective 7vise may be by way of discrimination, since 
Latona was not the supreme consort of Zeus. It may also be a 
transferred epithet indicating her relation to the Delphic oracle. 

21. The towered Cybele. Wife of Saturn and mother of the 
gods. Her diadem had three towers. 

30. Divine Alpheus. A river of Arcadia which ran underground 
through part of its course. When the nymph Arethusa fled from 



Arcades 149 



the hunter Alpheus to Ortygia in Sicily, he was transformed into a 
river that followed her under the sea and rose again in Ortygia to 
mingle with the waters of a fountain named after her. 

63. To the celestial Sirens' harmony. The suggestion for this 
phrase is clearly the passage in the tenth book of Plato's Republic, 
616 (Jowett's translation) : " Now when the spirits that were in the 
meadow had tarried seven days, on the eighth day they were 
obliged to proceed on their journey, and on the fourth day from 
that time they came to a place where they looked down from 
above upon a line of light, hke a column extending right through 
the whole heaven and earth, in colour not unhke the rainbow, only 
brighter and purer ; another day's journey brought them to the 
place, and there, in the midst of the light, they sav/ reaching from 
heaven the extremities of the chains of it : for this light is the belt 
of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the 
undergirders of a trireme. And from the extremities of the chains 
is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions 
turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and 
the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. 
Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and you 
are to suppose, as he described, that there is ,one large hollow 
whorl which is scooped out, and into this is fitted another lesser 
one, and another, and another, and four others, making eight in 
all, like boxes which fit into one another ; their edges are turned 
upwards, and all together form one continuous whorl. This is 
pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of 
the eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and 
the seven inner whorls narrow, in the following proportions: — the 
sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth ; then 
comes the eighth ; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is 
seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest [or fixed 
stars] is spangled, and the seventh [or sun] is brightest ; the 
eighth [or moon] colored by the reflected light of the seventh ; the 
second and fifth [Mercury and Saturn] are like one another, and of 



150 Notes 

a yellower colour than the preceding ; the third [Venus] has the 
whitest light ; the fourth [Mars] is reddish ; the sixth [Jupiter] is 
in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion ; 
but as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles 
move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; 
next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move 
together ; third in swiftness appeared to them to move in reversed 
orbit the fourth ; the third appeared fourth and the second fifth. 
The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity ; and on the upper 
surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning 
a single sound and note. The eight together form one harmony ; 
and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in 
number, each sitting upon her throne : these are the Fates, daugh- 
ters of Necessity, who are clothed in white raiment and have gar- 
lands upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who 
accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens — Lachesis 
singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future ; 
Clotho now and then assisting with a touch of her right hand the 
motion of the outer circle or whorl of the spindle, and Atropos with 
her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis 
laying hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with the 
other." See also Ben Jonson's Entertaiiunetit of King James and 
Queen Anne at Theobalds, 1. 15 : 

" Daughters of Night and Necessity attend : 
You that draw out the chain of destiny, 
Upon whose threads, both lives and times depend, 
And all the periods of mortality ; 
The will of Jove is, that you straight do look 
The change and fate unto this house decreed, 
And spinning from your adamantine hook, 
Unto the Genius of the place it read." 

97. Ladon's. Ladon was a river of Arcadia. 

98. Lycasus or Cyllene. Mountains of Arcadia. See Ben Jon- 
son's The Penates, "This place whereon you are now advanced (by 



Comus 151 



the mighty power of poetry, and the help of a faith that can remove 
mountains) is the Arcadian hill Cyllene, the place where myself 
[Mercury] was both begot and born, and of which I am frequently 
called Cyllenius." 

100. Erymanth. Erymanthus, a mountain range on the border 
of Arcadia, the haunt of the boar killed by Hercules. 

102. Mgenalus. A mountain of Arcadia. 

106. Syrinx. A nymph pursued by Pan. She was changed 
into a reed, and out of it Pan made his pipe, famous in pastoral 
poetry. 



COMUS 

4. In regions mild of calm and serene air. See Spenser's 
Amorettif Ixxii. : 

" Oft, when my spirit doth spred her bolder winges, 
In mind to mount up to the purest sky, 
It down is weighd with thoght of earthly things, 
And clogd with burden of mortality." 

7. Pestered. From the Latin through the French. It means 
burdened, clogged. In and pastorium (see Century Dictionary 
for etymology), a clog upon a pastured horse. 

7. Pinfold. Variant for pindfold or ponndfold. The word 
occurs in King Lear and in Piers Plowtnan. It means a pound for 
stray cattle. 

13. Golden key. See Lycidas^ in, for another description of 
this mark of virtuous attainment. 

20. High and nether Jove. Jupiter and Pluto. The distinction 
is Homeric, and the dividing of the world among Neptune, Jupiter, 
and Pluto after the overthrow of Saturn was a " stock property " 
in literature. Milton, however, had more than a conventional 
interest in it. It appealed to his imagination as a statesman and 
as a moralist. 



152 Notes 



26. Their sapphire crowns. See Isaiah liv. 1 1, "O thou afflicted, 
tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy 
stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires." 

27. And wield their little tridents. An excellent example of 
Milton's dry satire. 

29. Blue-haired deities. Milton's Mansus has " Oceani glau- 
cos profundit gurgite crines," 1. ^iVi t)ut the usual colour given by 
Ben Jonson to the hair of Oceanus is grey or " mixed." This would 
support the notion that Milton was using *' blue " in its old vague 
sense of dark and that he made the bright or golden hair the mark 
of the more powerful gods. 

31. Mickle. Old form of much. It survives in Scotch. See 
also Spenser's jSIuiopotinos : 

. . . "till mickle woe 
Thereof aiose, and manie a rufull teare." 

33. Old and haughty. Wales. See Ben Jonson's For the Hon- 
our of Wales. 

43. And listen why. See Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 
iv. 14. 88 : 

" Eros. My sword is drawn, 
Aiit. Then let it do at once 

The thing why thou hast drawn it." 

48. The Tuscan mariners transformed. Tyrrhenian pirates 
intended to sell Bacchus as a slave. The god changed them into 
dolphins, the masts and oars into snakes. Compare the words 
Tuscan, Etruscan, Tyrrhenian. 

49. As the winds listed. Listed is part of a verb formed by 
vowel change from lust, pleasure. 

50. Circe. See Odyssey, x, Chapman's tr. 

58. Comus. Milton invents a genealogy and outlines a charac- 
ter for what is hardly more than a name in classic mythology. He 
seems, however, to have in mind the passage in Ben Jonson's lines 
To Sir Robert Wroth : 



Comus 

' Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites, 
Comus puts in for new delights." 



S3 



60. Celtic and Iberian fields. France and Spain are meant. 

65. Orient liquor. Orient means clear, translucent. 

71. Ounce is a kind of lynx. The word is of uncertain origin. 

74. Not once perceive. Again Milton varies from the Homeric 
story. The companions of Ulysses v^^ere conscious of their dis- 
figurement. 

77. In a sensual sty. See Ben Jonson's Pleasure Recojuiled to 
Virtue : 

" Hercules. What rites are these ? breeds earth more monsters yet ? 
(Help virtue,) these are sponges and not men ; 



Whose feast the Belly's ? Comus ! and my cup 
Brought in to fill the drunken orgies up, 
And here abus'd ; that was the crowned reward 
Of thirsty heroes, after labour hard 1 
Burdens and shames of nature, perish, die I 
For yet you never lived, but in the sty. 

Can this be pleasure, to extinguish man, 
Or so quite change him in his figure ? 

These monsters plague themselves and fitly too, 
For they do suffer what and all they do." 

See Spenser's An Hytmte of Heavenly Love: 

" Then rouze thy selfe, O Earth ! out of thy soyle, 
In which thou wallowest like to filthy swyne, 
And doest thy mynd in durty pleasures moyle." . . . 

83. Iris' woof. A rainbow weave. 

84. A swain. The musician, Henry Lawes, who played the part. 
87. Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar. 



1 54 Notes 

See Ben Jonson's Forest: Epistle to Elizabeth^ Countess of Rutland^ 

1.74: 

" I have already used some happy hours, 

To her remembrance ; which when time shall bring 

To curious light, to notes I then shall sing, 

Will prove old Orpheus' act no tale to be : 

For I shall move stocks, stones, no less than he." 

97. Steep Atlantic. Steep here means bright, glittering. 

105. Rosy twine. Means rosy strand. 

no. Saws. See Old English sagu. A maxim or saying. 

116. Morrice. A dance brought by John of Gaunt to England. 
Called also Morisco. 

129. Cotytto. Thracian goddess of debauchery. 

132. Spets. Variant of spits. 

135. Hecat'. Presiding genius of magic and witchcraft. 

151. Trains. See Middle English traynen, to entice. See 
Spenser's Virgil's Gnat, 1. 241 : " Of trecherie or traines nought 
tooke he keep." 

154. Spongy air. Note the use of sponges in the passage 
quoted from Ben Jonson, 77, above. 

175. Granges. Barns for corn, granaries. 

176. Praise the bounteous Pan. See the mask of Ben Jon- 
son's called Fan's Anniversary. The whole is a point of departure 
for this first speech of the Lady, but the second Hymn affords par- 
ticular occasion for thank the gods amiss. It is : 

" Pan is our All, by him we breathe, we live. 
We move, we are ; 'tis he our lambs doth rear, 
Our flocks doth bless, and from the store doth give 
The warm and finer fleeces that we wear. 
He keeps away all heats and colds, 
Drives all diseases from our folds ; 
Makes everywhere the spring to dwell, 
The ewes to feed, their udders swell ; 
But if he frown, the sheep, alas ! 
The shepherds wither, and the grass," 



Comus 155 



207. Calling shapes. See Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess, i. I. 
117: 

" Or voices calling me in dead of night 
To make me follow." 

See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, 
Subs. 2 : "In the deserts of Lop in Asia, such illusions of walking 
spirits are often perceived . . . these devils will call him by his 
name, and counterfeit voices of his companions to seduce him." 

215. Chastity. Compare with Ben Jonson's " Untouched Vir- 
ginity " in The Barriers. 

221. Was I deceived? These questions and answers were a 
feature of conventional ballad and pastoral poetry. See the later 
use made of this device by Coleridge in Christabel. 

232. Meander. A winding river of Asia Minor. 

237. Narcissus. The love of Echo. He was changed into a 
flower. She pined away until nothing was left but her voice. 

245. Breathe such divine enchanting. Note the difference 
between Milton's conception of Comus as having still a soul of 
good in a thing evil and all similar presentations by Ben Jonson 
and other mask writers. Only Shakespeare is Milton's master 
here. 

253. The Sirens three. This episode is invented by Milton. 

257. Scylla. A sea-monster in Greek mythology represented 
as dwelHng in the rock Scylla, in the Strait of Messina. 

259. Charybdis. See Virgil's ^w^/V, iii. 551-560. 

262. But such a sacred and home-felt delight. This is most 
beautiful poetry, but the student should consider whether it is 
suited to the speaker or the character of a mask. See Ben 
Jonson's The Barriers, 1. 68 : 

" A settled quiet, freedom never checked." 

275. The courteous Echo. See Ben Jonson's Pan^s Anni- 
versary, Hymn iii : 

" If yet, if yet, 
Pan's orgies you will further fit, 



156 Notes 

See where the silver-footed fays do sit, 
The nymphs of wood and water; 
Each tree's and fountain's daughter 1 

Echo the truest oracle on ground, 
Though nothing but a sound. 
Echo. Though 7iothing but a sound. 

And often heard, though never seen." 

290. Hops. Goddess of youth. 

293. Swinked. See Old English, swincauy to toil. See 
Spenser's Prosopopoia, 1. i6l : 

" Free men some beggers call, but they be free, 
And they which call them so more beggers bee ; 
For they doo swinke and sweate to feed the other." 

297. Their port was more than human. See Spenser's 
Prothalainion^ 1. 168: 

" Above the rest were goodly to bee seene 
Two gentle Knights of lovely face and feature, 
Beseeming well the bower of anie Queene, 
With gifts of wit, and ornaments of nature. 
Fit for so goodly stature, 

That like the twins of Jove they seem'd in sight. 
Which decke the Bauldricke of the Heavens bright." 

299. Element. Here used in the most general sense compatible 
with the idea of the occult or of magic. 

313. Bosky. See busky, bushy, boscaye. 

315. Attendance. Attendants. Compare with visitor and 
visitant. 

317. Low-roosted. Low-Jiestitig is the real meaning. 

322. Courtesy. Contrast the undoubted expression of Milton's 
opinions on this subject with Ben Jonson's on Chivalry, in Prince 
Henrys Barriers : 



Comus 157 



'"Tis CHIVALRY 
Possessed with sleep, dead as a lethargy: 
If any charm will wake her, 'tis the name 
Of our Meliadus, I'll use his fame. 
Lady, Meliadus, lord of the isles, 
Princely Meliadus, and whom fate now styles 
The fair Meliadus, hath hung his shield 
Upon his tent, and here doth keep the field, 
According to his bold and princely word ; 
And wants employment for his pike and sword. 

" Break, you rusty doors, 
That have so long been shut, and from the shores 
Of all the world come knighthood, like a flood 
Upon these lists, to make the field here good, 
And your own honours, that are now called forth 
Against the wish of men to prove your worth ! " 

341. Star of Arcady. Allusion is here made to the constella- 
tion of the Great Bear by which Greek sailors steered. Arcadia 
was the home of Callisto and her son Areas, who were transformed 
into the Great and Little Bear. 

344. Wattled cotes. Cot of twigs, from Old English waiel, a 
hurdle and cote, a variant of cot. 

391. Or maple dish. See Burton's Anatomy of Melmicholy, Pt. 
2, Sec. 3, Mem, 3 : "A poor man drinks in a wooden dish, and 
eats his meat in wooden spoons, wooden platters, earthen vessels, 
and such homely stuff; the other in gold, silver, and precious 
stones; but with what success ? . . . fear of poison in the one, 
security in the other." 

393. Hesperian tree. Allusion to one of the labours of Hercules 
in killing the dragon set to watch the golden apples in the garden 
of the Hesperides. 

413. Squint suspicion. See Ben Jonson's The Mask of 

Queens, 1. 53 : 

" First then advance 
My drowsy servant, stupid Ignorance, 



158 Notes 

Known by thy scaly vesture ; and bring on 
Thy fearful sister, wild Suspicion, 
Whose eyes do never sleep." 

See also Spenser's Faerie Queene, iii. 12. 15: 

" His rolling eies did never rest in place." 

434. Blue meagre hag. See.'Bev\'^or\%on^s The Masque of Black- 
ness, " Since death herself (herself being pale and blue)." 

463. But when lust. This and the remainder of the speech 
are a poetic paraphrase of the analysis made by Burton, in The 
Anato77iy of Melancholy, of sensual degradation and the resulting 
melancholy. 

475. How charming is divine Philosophy ! 

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
The popular attitude toward philosophy is well enough presented 
in the satire of Ben Jonson's The Fortunate Isles, where Jophiel, an 
airy spirit, and, according to the Magi, the intelligence of Jupiter's 
sphere, discourses with Merefool after the following fashion : 

" Joph. Where would you wish to be now, or what to see, 
Without the Fortunate Purse to bear your charges, 
Or Wishing Hat ? I will but touch your temples, 
The corners of your eyes, and tinct the tip. 
The very tip o' your nose, with this collyrium. 
And you shall see in the air all the ideas, 
Spirits, and atoms, files that buz about 
This way and that way, and are rather admirable, 
Than any way intelligible. 
Mere. O, come, tinct me. 



But shall I only see ? 
Joph. See, and command. 



Mere. Let me see Pythagoras. 
Joph. Good. 
Mere. Or Plato. 



Comus 159 



Joph. Plato is framing some ideas 

Are now bespoken at a groat a dozen, 
Three gross at least : and for Pythagoras, 
He has rashly run himself on an employment 
Of keeping asses from a field of beans. 
And cannot be stav'd off"; 

or again in The Metajnorphosed Gipsies, of the same author, Jackman 
says: ** If we here be a little obscure, 'tis our pleasure; for rather 
than we will offer to be our own interpreters, we are resolved not to 
be understood; yet if any man doubt of the significancy of the lan- 
guage, we refer him to the third volume of Reports, set forth by the 
learned in the laws of canting, and published in the gipsy tongue." 

See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 4 : "Or 
let him that is melancholy peruse subtle Scolns^ and Sauj-ez' Meta- 
physicks, or School Divinity, Occam, Thomas, Entisberus, Durand, 
etc. ... If such voluntary tasks, pleasures and delight, or crabbed- 
ness of these studies will not yet divert their idle thoughts, and 
alienate their imaginations, they must be compelled . . ." 

494. Thyrsis. Theocritus makes Thyrsis a herdman, Virgil 
makes him a shepherd. 

502. Such a trivial toy. This nov/ unusual use of the word toy 
is found in a similar connection of ideas in Burton. See Anatomy 
of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. 3, Mem. i, Subs. 4: '''He may thus con- 
tinue peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, 
or some mixture of business which may divert his cogitations ; but 
at the last, ll^sa imaginatio, his phantasy is crazed, and now habit- 
uated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate ; the scene alters 
upon a sudden. Fear and Sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, 
suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places ; 
so by little and little, by that shoeing born of idleness and volun- 
tary solitariness. Melancholy, this feral fiend is drawn on . . .it was 
not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh . . ." Also 
he cites from Lucian, " Contemn the world and count that is in it 
vanity and toys." From Calenus, ..." amidst thy serious studies 



i6o Notes 

and business, use jests and conceits, plays and toys." . . . See also 
Spenser's The Teares of the Muses (Terpsichore), 1. 325 : 

" All places they doo with their toyes possesse, 
And raigne in liking of the multitude." 

513. ril tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous. Milton evidently 
had in mind Burton's discussion of the nature of devils, Anatomy of 
Melancholy, Pt. i. Sec. 2, Mem. i, Subs. 2, Part of this is as fol- 
lows: . . . "that they can represent castles in the air, palaces, 
armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal 
men's eyes, cause smells, savours, etc., deceive all the senses; 
most writers of this subject credibly believe, and that they can fore- 
tell future events and do many strange miracles. Juno's image 
spake to Camillus, and Fortune's statue to the Ro7)ian matrons, 
with many such, Zanchius, Bodine, Spondanus, and others are of 
opinion that they cause a true Metamorphosis, as Nebuchadnezzar 
was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, 
Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs by Circe^s charms. . . . 
Many will not believe they can be seen, and if any man shall say, 
swear, and stiffly maintain, though he be discreet and wise, judicious 
and learned, that he hath seen them, they account him a timorous 
fool, a melancholy dizzard, a weak fellow, a dreamer, a sick or a 
mad man, they contemn him, laugh him to scorn, and yet Marcus 
of his credit told Psellus that he had often seen them. . . . Many 
deny it, saith Lavater . . . because they never saxv them themselves ; 
but as he reports at large all over his book . . . they are often seen 
and heard and familiarly converse with men, as Lad. Vives assureth 
us, innumerable records, histories, and testimonies evince in all 
ages, times, places, and all travellers besides . . . have infinite vari- 
ety of such examples of apparitions of spirits, for him to read that 
farther doubts, to his ample satisfaction." 

517. Chimeras. See Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, 
Sec. 4, Mem. 2, Subs. 6 . . . "they smell brimstone, talk familiarly 
with Devils, hear and see Chimeras, prodigious and uncouth shapes, 



Comus i6i 

Bears, Owls, Anticks, black dogs, fiends, hideous outcries, fearful 
noises, shrieks, lamentable complaints." . . . 

520. Navel. This is the diminutive of nave. The original 
meaning of nave is associated with the idea of bursting, and the 
immediate application is to the central or body part of an instru- 
ment or building. The nave of a wheel, of a church. 

526. Murmurs. This is an imitative word used, doubtless, allu- 
sively, to suggest spells and charms employed by a magician. 

542. Knot-grass. Possibly the florin grass. 

546. Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy. See Burton's 
Anatomy of Melaticholy, Pt. I, Sec, 3, Mem. i. Subs. 4. Ups and 
Dozuns of Melajicholy : " Generally thus much we may conclude 
of melancholy; that it is most pleasant at first, I say, ffiends gratis- 
simus error, a most delightsome humour, to be alone, dwell alone, 
walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole days, dreaming awake as it 
were, and frame a thousand fantastical imaginations unto them- 
selves. They are never better pleased than when they are so doing, 
they are in paradise for the time, and cannot well endure to be 
interrupt; . . . 'tis so pleasant, he cannot refrain." See also 
John Fletcher, The Oxford Book of English Verse, ip. 24O: 

" Hence, all you vain delights, 
As short as are the nights 
Wherein you spend your folly ! 
There's naught in this life sweet, 
If men were wise to see't, 
But only melancholy — 
O sweetest melancholy ! 
Welcome, folded armes and fix^d eyes, 
A sight that piercing mortifies ; 
A look that's fasten'd to the ground, 
A tongue chain'd up without a sound ! 

" Fountain-heads and pathless groves ; 
Places which pale passion loves ! 
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS ~H 



1 62 Notes 

Are warmly housed, save bats and owls ! 
^ A midnight bell, a parting groan — 

These are the sounds we feed upon : 
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, 
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." 

552. Till an unusual stop. See 1. 145. Is this reference a 
good dramatic device? 

589. Virtue may be assailed. See the songs in Ben Jonson's 
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue : 

" These, these are hours by Virtue spared, 
Herself, she being her own reward. 
But she will have you know, 

That though 
Her sports be soft, her life is hard. 

"You must return unto the Hill, 
And there advance 
With labour, and inhabit still 
That height and crown, 
From whence you ever may look down 
Upon triumphed chance. 

" She, she it is in darkness shines, 
'Tis she that still herself refines. 
By her own light to every eye ; 
More seen, more known, when Vice stands by; 
And though a stranger here on earth, 
In heaven she hath her right of birth." 

604. Sooty flag of Acheron. This is one of Milton's liberties 
with words. The idea to be conveyed is that of a black flag. 
Acheron was a river, and the under-world, thus typified, was logi- 
cally wet, not sooty, as would have been natural had the reference 
been to the fires of Hell. But pictures of pirates, associations with 
black as the colour of doom, combine to make this one of the most 
successful of Milton's verbal adventures. 



Comus 163 



605. Harpies. Virgil's JEneid, iii. 212, 213. 

605. Hydras. The nine-headed dragon of Lake Lerna. The 
destruction of the Hydra was one of the twelve labours of Hercules. 

614. Unthread tliy joints. See Shakespeare's The Tempest, iii. 
I. 26. "I had rather crack my sinews, break my back." See also 
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. i, Sec. 2, Mem. i, Subs. 3, 
on the effects of spells and curses. 

619. Certain shepherd lad. The effort of some editors to find 
here a reference to Milton's friend, Charles Diodati, illustrates the 
excess of zeal likely to overtake commentators. There is not only 
no need of specific reference in this passage, but the character of 
the alleged reference does not suit with either Milton's literary 
methods or Charles Diodati's relations with him. 

627. Simples. Medicinal herbs or medicines obtained from an 
herb, in view of its supposed possession of some particular virtue. 
The term is really an abbreviation for simple herbs, simple sub- 
stances. See the form whites, yellows, etc. 

635. Clouted shoon. Patched shoes. Clouted is a form of Old 
English clut, a rag. See Hajnlet, iv. 5. 22,.: 

" How should I your true love know 
From another one ? 
By his cockle hat and staff, 

And his sandal shoon." 

636. Moly. See Odyssey, x. 305. The plant that protected 
Ulysses from the magic of Circe. See Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 4, " Bernardus Penottus prefers 
his Herba solis, or Dutch sindaw, before all the rest in this disease, 
and will admit of no herb upon the earth to be compared to it. It 
excels Homer's Moly." . . . 

638. Haemony. See Spenser's Astrophel, 1. i : 

" A gentle shepheard borne in Arcady, 
Of gentlest race that ever shepheard bore, 
About the grassie bancks of Haemony 
Did keepe his sheep, his litle stock and store." 



1 64 Notes 

The spirit of Milton's passage seems to be taken from Burton in 
his defense of native against exotic simples, Anatomy of Melan- 
choly^ Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "For as there be divers dis- 
tinct infirmities, continually vexing us, . . . so there be several 
remedies, as he saith,7^r each disease a medicine, for every hwnour, 
and, as some hold, every clime, every country, and more than that, 
every private place, hath his proper remedies grovi'ing in it, peculiar 
almost to the domineering and most frequent maladies of it. . . . 
I know that many are of opinion our Northern simples are vixak, 
imperfect, not so well concocted, of such force, as those in the 
Southern parts, not so fit to be used in physick, and will therefore 
fetch their drugs afar off ! ... Many times they are over curious 
in this kind, whom, Fiichsiiis taxeth, . . . thet they think they do 
nothing except they rake all over India, Arabia, y^thiopia, for 
reviedies, and fetch their Physick fro7n the three quarters of the 
world, and from beyond the Garasnantes. Many an old wife or 
country woman doth often more good with a few knoivn and common 
garden herbs than our bombast Physicians with all their prodigious, 
sumptuous, far-fetched, rare, conjectural medicines.^'' 

The effect of Hcemony was probably suggested to Milton by 
the treatment of herbs, as a cure for Despair, found in Burton, 
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. 2, Subs. 6 : "Of 
herbs, he reckons as Pennyroyal, Rue, Mint, Angelica, Piony: 
... St. John's wort . . . which by a divine virtue drives away 
Devils, ... all which rightly used by their suffitus expel Devils 
themselves, and all devilish illusions. . . . The ancients used 
therefore to plant it (Betony) in churchyards, because it was held 
to be an holy herb, and good against fearful visions, did secure 
such places it grew in, and sanctified those persons that carried it 
about them. 

646. Lime-twigs. Literally twigs daubed with bird lime. 
Hence snares. See Spenser's Muiopotmos, 1. 428 : 

" Himselfe he tide, and wrapt his winges twaine 
In lymie snares the subtill loupes among." 



Comus 165 



653. But seize his wand. See Ben Jonson's The Fortunate 

Isles: 

..." you shall be 
Principal secretary to the stars : 
Know all the signatures and combinations, 
The divine rods and consecrated roots: 
What not ? " 

655. Sons of Vulcan. Virgil's Aineid, viii. 252. The giant 
Cacus, son of Vulcan, is alluded to. 

660. Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster. See 
Spenser's An Hymne hi Ho7ioiir of Love, 1. 138: 

" And otherwhyles, their dying to delay, 
Thou doest emmarble the proud hart of her 
Whose love before their life they doe prefer." 

672. Julep. Means here a sweet drink, otherwise rose water. 

675. Nepenthes. Odyssey^ iv. 221. See Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 6, Subs. 2 : "A gentle speech is 
the true cure of a wounded soul, as Plutarch contends out of 
vEschylus and Euripides ... a charm, . . . that true Nepenthes 
of Homer, which was no Indian plant or feigned medicine, which 
Polydamna, Thongs wife, sent Helen for a token, as Macrohins 7, 
. . . and others suppose, but opportunely of speech : for Helen's 
bowl, Media's unction, Venus' girdle, Circe's cup, cannot so en- 
chant, so forcibly move or alter, as it doth. ... Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 
6, Subs. 4: Pleasant discourse, jests, conceits, merry tales, as 
Petronius . . . and many good Authors plead, are that sole A^epen- 
thes of Horner, Helen's bowl, Venus' girdle, so renowned of old to 
expel grief and care, to cause mirth and gladness of heart, if they 
be rightly understood, or reasonably applied. Pt. 2, Sec. 4, Mem. 
I, Subs. 3: Pliny much magnifies this plant (Bugloss). It may be 
diversely used ... an herb indeed of such sovereignty that as Dio- 
dorus, Plutarch . . . suppose it was that famous Nfepenthes of Ho77ier, 
which Polydamna, Thon's wife (then king of Thebes in ALgypt) 
sent Helen for a token, of such rare virtue, that if taken steept in 



1 66 Notes 

wine, if wife and children, father and mother, brother and sister, 
and all thy dearest friends, should die before thy face, thou couldst 
not grieve or shed a tear for them. ... Pt. 2, Sec. 5, Mem. i, 
Subs. 5 : Amongst this number of Cordials and Alteratives I do not 
find a more present remedy than a cup of wine or strong drink, if 
it be soberly and opportunely used. . . . It glads the heart of tnan^ 
Helenas bowl, the sole Nectar of the Gods, or that true Nepenthes 
in Horner^ which puts away care and grief, as Orebasius and some 
others will, was naught else but a cup of good wine." . . . 

707. Budge doctors of the Stoic fur. Halliwell has, " budge, 
lambskin with the wool dressed outwards, often worn on the edges 
of capes, as gowns of bachelors of arts are still made." See bag 
and budget. 

707. Stoic. See Burton's Anatomy of Melajzcholy, Symptoms of 
Love, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Subs, i: "Your most grim Stoicks, 
and severe Philosophers will melt away with this passion, and if 
Athenseus bely them not, Aristippus, Apollodorus, etc., have made 
love-songs and commentaries of their Mistress' praises. Orators 
wrote Epistles, Princes given Titles, Honours, what not ? " 

708. Cynic tub. Allusion to Diogenes. 

719. Hutched. Means put in a box or chest. The origin of the 
word is uncertain. 

721. Pulse. See Latin /zitA, beans, pease. 

739. Beauty is Nature's coin. See Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
i. vi. See also Ben Jonson, The Barriers. *""**''*^ 

745. Brag. Probably of Celtic origin, meaning to boast. 
Spenser uses an adjective bragy. 

750. Sorry. Old English, sarig, wounded, afflicted, miserable. 
See stony, bony, gory. 

760. Bolt. To sift through cloth; hence to quibble. 

779. Crams. Middle English, crammen. Old English, cram- 
mian,\.o stuff. See Spenser's Visions of the IVorld's Vanitie, iii. 3: 
" A mightie Crocodile, 
That, cram'd with guiltles blood and greedie prey." 



Comus 167 

787. Serious doctrine of Virginity. See, for the opposite, the 
verses of Ben Jonson in The Barriers. 

800. She fables not. See Ben Jonson's Love Restored : 

" I have my spirits again, and feel my limbs. 
Away with this cold cloud that dims 
My light! Lie there, my furs, and charms." . . . 

803. Wrath of Jove. Alludes to the overthrow of the Titans. 

804. Erebus. '$)Q.q Paradise Lost/\\. %%t^. See Spenser^ s Virgi/'s 
Gnat, 1. 213: 

" By this the Night forth from the darksome bowre 
Of Herebus her teemed steedes gan call." 

809. *Tis but the lees. This is a poetic paraphrase of Burton 
in his treatment of melancholy arising from humours and spirits of 
the body. 

816. Rod reversed. See Ovid, Met. xiv. 300. See Spenser's 
The Rttines of Rome, xxii : 

" So, when the compast course of the universe 
In sixe and thirtie thousand yeares is ronne. 
The bands of th' elements shall backe reverse 
To their first discord, and be quite undonne." 

817. Backward mutters. See Shakespeare's Much Ado, iii. i. 

59: 

I never yet saw man, 

How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, 
But she would spell him backward." 

See Spenser's Prosopopoia, 1. 832 : 

" Then he would scoffe at learning, and eke scorne 
The Sectaries thereof, as people base 
And simple men, which never came in place 
Of worlds affaires, but, in darke corners mewd, 
Muttred of matters as their bookes them shewd." 

822. Melibceus. Conventional name for a shepherd. The 
literary allusion here is to Geoffrey of Monmouth, author of the 



1 68 Notes 

History of the Britons, from which the story of Sabre or Sabrina is 
taken. 

826. Sabrina is her name. See Spenser's Daphnaida, 1. 99 : 

" Whilome I usde (as thou right well doest know) 
My little flocke on westerne downes to keepe 
Not far from whence Sabrinaes streame doth flow." 

835. Nereus. A sea god, son of Pontus and Gaea, husband of 
Doris, and father of the fifty Nereids. 

838. Asphodil. One of the flowers of the Elysian fields. 

845. Urchin blasts. Elvish or impish blights. See King Lear, 
i. 4. 321 : "Blasts and fogs upon thee." Job iv. 9: "By the blast 
of God they perish." 'Ly\y, Enphues : . . . " Some blossoms, some 
blasts." 

868. Great Oceanus. In ancient geography, a swift and un- 
bounded stream. The outer sea or Atlantic Ocean, The husband 
of Tethys. 

869. Neptune. A sea god. See Ben Jonson's Neptune's 
Triumph : 

" The mighty Neptune, mighty in his styles, 
And large command of waters and of isles ; 
Not as the ' lord and sovereign of the seas,' 
But ' chief in the art of riding,' late did please, 
To send his Albion forth, the most his own. 
Upon discovery to themselves best known, 
Through Celtiberia; and, to assist his course, 
Gave him his powerful Manager of Horse, 
With divine Proteus, father of disguise. 
To wait upon them with his counsels wise, 
In all extremes." 

872. Carpathian wizard. See Virgil's Georgics, iv. Proteus 
is alluded to. He was a sea god, the son of Oceanus and Tethys, 
and had the power of assuming different shapes. He was also a 
sea shepherd, with sea calves for his flock. 

873. Triton. Son of Neptune, or Poseidon, and Amphitrite, or 



Comus 169 



Celseno. He had a shell trumpet which he blew to quiet the 
waves and he rode the sea horses, 

874. Soothsaying Glaucus. A fisherman of Boeotia, trans- 
formed into a sea god with prophetic powers. 

875. Leucothea's lovely hands. Ino, the white goddess, 
daughter of Cadmus, mother of the sea god, PaliJemon, god of ports 
and harbours. See Odyssey, v. 461-462. 

877. Thetis. Daughter of Nereus, mother of Achilles. Homer 
makes her "silver-footed." 

878. Sirens sweet. Three sea nymphs whose home was an 
island near Cape Pelorus in Sicily. They lured sailors ashore by 
their songs and then killed them. The three are Parthenope, 
Ligeia, and Leucothea. 

894. Turkis. Turquoise. The real meaning of the word is 
simply Turkish. 

921. Amphitrite's bower. Chamber of Amphitrite, wife of 
Neptune. 

922. Daughter of Locrine. Sabrina's father, son of Brutus, the 
second founder of Britain. His wife was Gwendolen of Cornwall. 
Sabrina's mother was Estrildis, a German princess. 

923. Anchises' line. Anchises was father of ^neas; Brutus 
was descended from Anchises. 

964. Dryades. Wood nymphs whose lives were bound up with 
those of their trees. 

991. Nard and cassia. Skeat says, "Nard, an unguent from an 
aromatic plant . . . the name is Aryan, from Sanskrit nal, to smell." 
Cassia is a species of laurel. 

999. Adonis. The beloved of Venus. He died gored by a wild 
boar. 

1002. Assyrian queen. Astarte. The Phoenician moon god- 
dess. See Paradise Lost, i. 438. 

1004. Cupid. The story of Cupid and Psyche is given in The 
Golden Ass of Apuleius. For versions of the episode, see Lafon- 
taine, Moliere, William Morris, Walter Pater. The story is briefly 



lyo Notes 

that Cupid loved Psyche, a mortal maiden. He visited her at 
night with strict instructions that she should make no effort to dis- 
cover who he was. Her curiosity led her to disobey, and in hold- 
ing a lamp over his body, she dropped hot oil on his shoulder, 
woke him; and he fled. Psyche wandered through all lands, search- 
ing for her lover, and was cruelly persecuted by Venus. At last she 
was made immortal and united to Cupid. The treatment given to 
this story by Walter Pater in Marius the Epictcreaiz is remarkably 
close to the spirit of that by Apuleius. 

1019. Love Virtue; she alone is free. See Ben Jonson's 
Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue : 

" There, there is Virtue's seat : 
Strive to keep her your own ; 
'Tis only she can make you great, 
Though place here make you known." 

Also Spenser's Tlie Teares of the Mtises (Calliope), 1. 457: 

" Therefore the nurse of vertue I am hight, 
And golden Trompet of eternitie, 
That lowly thoughts lift up to heaven's hight, 
And mortall men have powre to deifie; 
Bacchus and Hercules I raisd to heaven, 
And Charlemaine amongst the Starris seaven." 



LYCIDAS 



I. Yet once more. There seems little reason for finding any 
peculiar or biographical significance in this phrase. The reference 
is quite as much to the fact that Milton is another in the long list 
of aspirants to the laurel as that it is three years since he had 
written Comus. The student should compare the phrase and verse 
structure of this opening with that of Spenser's Astrophel. 

8. Lycidas. A name used in pastorals by Virgil, Ovid, Theoc- 
ritus, 



Lycidas 171 



10. He knew. King wrote Latin verses, but the compliment 
implied seems somewhat empty at the hands of Milton. 

11. Rhyme. This spelling does not appear before 1550. The 
Old English rim meant number. See also Spenser's Kuines of 
Rome, XXV : 

" I would assay with that which in me is 
To builde, with levell of my loftie style 
That which no hands can evermore compyle." 

13. Welter. Old English wealtan, to roll around. See walky 
waltz. 

14. Melodious tear. See Spenser's title to his poem, The 
Tea?-es of the Muses. 

15. Sisters of the sacred well. The Pierian Spring at the 
foot of Olympus in Thessaly, the birthplace and home of the nine 
muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Milton was mindful of 
Spenser's The Teares of the Muses, 1. i : 

" Rehearse to me, ye sacred Sisters nine, 
The golden brood of great Apolloes wit, 
Those piteous plaints and sorrowful sad tine 
Which tale ye powred forth as ye did sit 
Beside the silver Springs of Helicone, 
Making your musick of hart-breaking mone. " 

28. Greyfly. The horse-fly, or cleg. 

34. Satyrs . . . Fauns. Satyr, a monster, half man, half goat. 
Faun, a rural deity, sometimes confused with satyrs. Originally 
the faun had a human form, but with short goat's tail, pointed ears, 
and small h^rns; later they were represented with the hind legs of 
a goat. 

36. DamcEtas. A herdsman figuring in the Pastorals of Theoc- 
ritus and of Virgil. 

40. Gadding. Rambling idly. See Romeo and Juliet, iv. 2. 16. 
See also gad-fly. 

46. Taint-worm. Possibly a small red spider, hurtful to cattle. 

52. The steep. The hill. 



172 Notes 



53. Druids. Priests or ministers of Celtic religion in Gaul, 
Ireland, and Britain. Their chief seats were in Wales, Brittany, 
and France. 

If 54. Mona. The Roman name for the island of Anglesey. See 
Leconte de Lisle's Le Massacre de Mona. 

55. Deva. Chester, on the river Dee, was the port from which 
Edward King sailed. Spenser and Drayton describe the river as 
the home of magicians. 

58. What could the Muse. Orpheus, son of the muse Calliope, 
offended the Thracian women by his stubborn grief for Eurydice. 
They tore him to pieces in their Bacchanalian rites. The Muses 
buried his body at the foot of Olympus, his head was thrown into 
the Hebrus, which carried it to Lesbos, where it rested. See Para- 
dise Lost, vii. 32-39. 

64. Alas ! what boots it with incessant care. See Spenser's 
The Teares of the Muses (Calliope), 1. 445 : 

" What bootes it then to come from glorious 
Forefathers, or to have been nobly bredd ? 
What oddes twixt Irus and old Inachus, 
Twixt best and worst, when both alike are dedd ; 
If none of neither mention should make, 
Nor out of dust their memories awake ? 
Or who would ever care to doo brave deed, 
Or strive in vertue others to excell, 
If none should yeeld him his deserved meed, 
Due praise, that is the spur of dooing well ? 
For if good were not praised more than ill. 
None would choose goodnes of his owne free will." 

66. And strictly meditates the thankless Muse. This use of 
verbs commonly intransitive as transitive is by no means peculiar 
to Milton. Freedom in this respect is a poetic privilege. Shake- 
speare and Spenser take all sorts of liberties with the " parts of 
speech." Examples from Spenser are : 



Lycidas 1 73 



The Teares of the Muses (Calliope), 1. 436: " That doth degenerate 
the noble race." 

1. 463 : " But now I will my golden Clarion rend, 
1. 464: " And will henceforth immortalize no more." 
1. 421 : " To whom shall I my evill case complaine." 

The Teares of the Muses (Polyhymnia), 1. 582: "That her eternize 
with their heavenlie writs ! " 

Ruines of Rome, xiv : 

"And as at Troy most dastards of the Greekes, 
Did brave about the corpes of Hector colde." 

68. Amaryllis. A shepherdess in the Idyls of Theocritus and 
the Eclogues of Virgil. 

69. Neaera. A maiden of classic pastoral poetry. See Burton's 
translation of Marullus, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, 
Mem. 3, Subs, i : 

" So thy white neck, Neaera, me poor soul 
Doth scorch, thy cheeks, thy wanton eyes that roll: 
Were it not for my dropping tears that hinder 
I should be quite burnt up forthwith to cinder." 

See ibid., Ariosto, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, 
Subs. I : 

" He that commends Phyllis, or Neaera, 
Or Amaryllis, or Galatea, 
Tityrus, or Melibasa, by your leave, 
Let him be mute, his Love the praises have." 

75. The blind Fury. Atropos. See Spenser's Ruines of 
Rome, xxiv : 

" If the blinde Furie, which warres breedeth oft." 

78. Fame is no plant. See Spenser's The Teares of the Muses 
(Urania), 1. 524: 

" How ever yet they mee despise and spight, 
I ieede on sweet contentment of my thought, 



174 Notes 



And please my selfe with mine owne selfe-delight, 
In contemplation of things heavenlie wrought; 
So, loathing earth, I looke up to the sky, 
And, being driven hence, I thether fly." 

79. Nor in the glistering foil. See Burton's use of the word 

glistering, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. 3, Mem. 3 : " Some 
he doth exalt, prefer, bless with worldly riches, honours, offices, 
and preferments, as so many glistering stars he makes to shine 
above the rest." The Old English verb glisnian is the form that 
should regularly give a verb glisen, but the word is spelled with an 
excrescent /. This t, however, is not sounded, unless its influence 
in keeping the s hard may be considered a sound by courtesy. See 
Spenser's Virgil's G^zat, 1. 99, 100: 

" Ne glistering of golde, which underlayes 
The summer beames, doe blinde his gazing eye." 

85. fountain Arethuse. The Muse of pastoral poetry had 
her home by the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily. Allusion is also to 
Theocritus as a writer of pastorals. 

86. Smooth-sliding Mincius. A river in Italy near which 
Virgil was born. See Virgil's Eclogue, vii. See also Spenser's Vir- 
gil's Gnaty 1. 1 7 : 

" He shall inspire my verse with gentle mood, 
Of Poets Prince, whether he woon beside 
Faire Xanthus sprincled with Chimseras blood, 
Or in the woods of Astery abide ; 
Or whereas Mount Parnasse, the Muses brood, 
Doth his broad forhead like two homes divide. 
And the sweete waves of sounding Castaly 
With liquid foote doth slide downe easily." 

87. But now my oat. Old English ate, pi. atan. A cereal 
plant. In secondary sense, a musical pipe of oat straw; figuratively, 
pastoral song. 

89. The Herald of the Sea. Triton. 



Lycidas 175 



96. Hippotades. ^olus, the wind god, son of Hippota. 

99. Panope. One of the Nereids. 

loi. Built in the eclipse. See Paradise Lost, ii, 66^, 666: 

..." the labouring moon 
Eclipses at their charms." 

Also Paradise Lost, i. 597 : 

..." from behind the moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, or with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs." 

103. Next Camus. The genius of the river Cam and of Cam- 
bridge University. 

106. Sanguine flower inscribed with woe. The hyacinth. 
On the petals appear marks interpreted by the Greeks as ai, ai, 
alas 1 alas ! 

109. The Pilot of the Galilean lake. St. Peter. See Ruskin's 
Sesame and Lilies. 

112. Mitred locks. The mitre is the symbol of episcopal 
authority. St. Peter is the head and chief bishop of the church. 

113. How well could I have spared. See on this general sub 
ject Spenser's The Shepheards Calender (Maye, Julye, September) 
See also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i 
Subs. 3: "In our days v/e have a new scene of superstitious Im 
posters and Hereticks, a new company of Actors, of Antichrists 
that great Antichrist himself ; a rope of Popes, that by their great 
nes= and authority bear down all before them ; who from that time 
they proclaimed themselves universal Bishops, to establish their 
own kingdom, sovereignty, greatness, and to enrich themselves 
brought in such a company of human traditions . . ." Pt. 3, Sec. 4, 
Mem. 2, Subs. 2 : " All their study is to please, and their god is their 
commodity, their labour to satisfy their lusts, and their endeavours to 



176 Notes 

their own ends. . . . They have Esau's hands, and Jacob's voice; 
yea and many of those holy Friars, sanctified men . . . They are 
wolves in sheep's clothing. . . ." 

Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "His ordinary instruments or 
factors which he useth, as God himself did good Kings, lawful Mag- 
istrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his Church, are 
Politicians, Statesmen, Priests, Hereticks, blind guides. Impostors, 
pseudo-prophets to propagate his superstition. . . . 

" Now for their authority, what by auricular Confession, satisfac- 
tion, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, etc. . . . 

"And if it were not yet enough by Priests and Politicians to 
delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors 
in his Tragedy, more Irons in the fire, another Scene of Hereticks, 
factions, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, Schismaticks, Impostors, 
false Prophets, blind guiles, that out of pride, singularity, vain 
glory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in uproar by 
their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divi- 
sions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, 
commit Prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against 
son, to the ruin and destruction of a common-wealth, to the dis- 
turbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates." 

1 22. What recks it them ? The impersonal use of the verb from 
the Old English recan, to care. Here it means, as in Comus, 1. 404, 
concerns. 

123. List. This was in general use by Spenser, Burton, and 
other writers familiar to Milton in his reading. 

124. Scrannel. This word is clearly dialectical. See scrawny. 
128. The grim wolf. Th-re seems little need of forcing the 

interpretation closely here. Milton is describing the evils of care- 
less herding. The wolf was one of the traditional enemies of the 
flock and was a danger whether in the guise of a Pope or of an Arch- 
bishop Laud. There might also have been a literary reminiscence 
of the Kidde and the Foxe in Spenser's Shepheards Calender (May). 
Irresponsibility is always an enemy of true religion. 



Lycidas 177 

130. But that two-handed engine. The inspiration of this 
passage is clearly found in Burton's Attaiomy of Melancholy, Pt. 3, 
Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 2: "Now the means by which, or advan- 
tages the Devil and his infernal Ministers take, so to delude and 
disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, super- 
stitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, sim- 
plicity, Hope and Fear, those two battering Canons, and principal 
Engines, with their objects, reward and punishment. Purgatory, 
Limbus Patrw7i, etc. ... To these advantages of Hope and 
Fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, 
devices, to batter and enthrall. ..." 

131. Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more. See 
Burton's Anatomy of MelancJioly, Pt. 3, Sec. 4, Mem. i, Subs. 3: 
" P'or it is that great torture, that infernal plague of mortal man, 
omnium pestium pestilentissi77ia superstitio, and able of itself to 
stand in opposition to all other plagues, miseries, and calamities 
whatsoever; far more cruel, more pestiferous, more grievous, more 
general, more violent, of a greater extent. Other fears and sorrows, 
grievances of body and mind, are troublesome for the time; but 
this is for ever, eternal damnation, hell itself, a plague, a fire; an 
inundation hurts one Province alone, and the loss may be recovered; 
but this superstition involves all the world almost, and can never be 
remedied. Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious 
soul hath no rest ; ... no peace, no quietness. True religion and 
Superstition are quite opposite, longe diversa carnificina et pietas, 
as Lactantius describes, the one erears, the other dejects ; ... the 
one is ah easy yoke, the other an intolerable burden, an absolute 
tyranny; the one a sure anchor, an haven; the other a tempestuous 
Ocean; the one makes, the other mars; the one is wisdom, the 
other is folly, madness, indiscretion; the one unfeigned, the other 
a counterfeit; the one a diligent observer, the other an ape; one 
leads to heaven, the other to hell." 

Milton was an extreme individualist in religion, and the picture 
he draws of the misguided flock has a long and wide historical 

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS — 12 



178 Notes 

application. No true religion is intended by it, and all false doc- 
trine, envy, and schism, wherever met, is covered by it. 

132. Return, Alpheus. The lover of Arethusa. This alludes, 
figuratively, to the almost forgotten claims of pastoral poetry. 

138. Swart star. Sirius, the dog star. Szvart is the Old 
English sweart, black. Compare sordid. 

142. The rathe primrose. See Ruskin, Modern Painters, ii., for 
an interesting criticism on this passage. The proper form should 
preserve an initial //, hrath, quick, ready, swift. Here the word 
means early. 

150. Daffadillies. Asphodil. The corrupt form has a certain 
pathos that the classic name might lack. 

151. Laureate hearse. Hearse meant originally a kind of 
pyramidal candlestick used in the services of holy week. Then 
it became the name of the funeral carriage. Laureate means 
crowned with laurel. See Spenser's Daphnaida, 1. 526: 

" And ye, faire Damsels ! Shepheards dere delights, 
That with your loves do their rude hearts possesse, 
When as my hearse shall happen to your sightes, 
Vouchsafe to deck the same with Cyparesse." 

151. Lycid. Lycidas. 

156. Stormy Hebrides. Islands west of Scotland, the Ebudse 
of Ptolemy, or the Hebrides of Pliny. 

160. Bellerus old. A legendary Cornish giant. His home was 
supposed to be Land's End. 

161. The guarded mount. See Spenser's The Shepheards 
Calender (Julye) : 

" In evill houre thou hentest in hond 

Thus holy hylles to blame, 
For sacred unto saints they stond, 

And of them han theyr name. 
St. Michels Mount who does not know, 

That wardes the Westerne coste ? " 



Lycidas 179 



162. Namancos. Aumantia, a town in Old Castile, Spain. 

162. Bayona. Bayonne. 

173. Of Him that walked the waves. See Matthew xiv. 22 
et seq. 

176. Unexpressive. Used here in the sense of inexpressible. 

181. And wipe the tears. See Revelation vii. 17; xxi. 4. 

186. Uncouth. Old English un, not, and cuth, known; past 
participle of cunrtan, to know. See Lowland Scotch utico. The 
meaning is variously : strange, unusual, odd, lonely, solitary. 

188. Stops of various quills. Quills, a cane or reed pipe, such 
as were used in Pan's pipes. See Spenser's The Shepheards Cal- 
ender (June), "homely shepheards quill," and Daphna'ida, iii, "Ne 
ever shepheard sound his oaten quill." . . . 

189. Doric lay. A song or poem in the language of the Dorians. 
This dialect was characterized by broadness and hardness and was 
contrasted with Lydian and Ionian. It was also the pastoral dialect. 

190. And now. It was customary to close pastorals with some 
reference to time and seasons in nature. See Virgil's Eclogues. 
Also Spenser's The Shepheards Calender (Januarie) : 

*' By that, the welked Phoebus gan availe 
His weary waine ; and nowe the frosty Night 
Her mantle black through heaven gan overhaile; 
Which seene, the pensife boy, halfe in despight, 
Arose, and homeward drove his sonned sheepe, 
Whose hanging heads did seeme his carefull case to weepe.' 

But the energy of Milton's reference to the future is character- 
istic rather than conventional. Although Phineas Fletcher, in The 
Purple Island, vi. 78, has : 

" Home, then, my lambs; the falling drops eschew; 
To-morrow shall ye feast in pastures new." 



Important Text=Books in Rhetoric 

BY ADAMS SHERMAN HILL 

Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard University 



BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND COM- 
POSITION $1.25 

This book is designed primarily to meet the needs of pupils 
in secondary schools who are learning to express themselves 
with the pen ; at the same time it coi^tains so much infor- 
mation that is new in presentation and permanent in value 
that it is well adapted to more mature minds. It shows 
the young writer how to present what he has to say in the 
best English within his reach and in the form best adapted 
to his purpose. No supplement with exercises is required 
in connection with this work, as the book is complete in 
itself. Nearly two hundred exercises are introduced to aid 
the pupil in the most practical way. 

FOUNDATIONS OF RHETORIC . . $1.00 

The object of this book is to train boys and girls to say 
in written language, correctly, clearly, and effectively, what 
they have to say. It gives a minimum of space to tech- 
nicalities and a maximum of space to essentials. In language 
singularly direct and simple it sets forth fundamental prin- 
ciples of correct speaking, and accompanies each rule with 
abundant illustrations and examples. 

PRINCIPLES OF RHETORIC . . . $1.20 

This popular work has been almost wholly rewritten, and is 
enlarged by much new material. The treatment is based 
on the principle that the function of rhetoric is not to pro- 
vide the student of composition with materials for thought, 
nor yet to lead him to cultivate style for style's sake, but 
to stimulate and train his powers of expression — to enable 
him to say what he has to say in appropriate language. 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

(S. 87) 



A History of English Literature 

By REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A. (Yale) 
Cloth, 12mo, 499 pages. Illustrated . . Price $1.25 



Halleck's History of English Literature is a concise and 
interesting^ text-book of the history and development of Eng- 
lish literature from the earliest times to the present. While 
the work is sufficiently simple to be readily comprehended by 
high school students, the treatment is not only philosophic, 
but also stimulating and suggestive, and will naturally lead to 
original thinking. 

The book is a history of literature and not a mere collection 
of biographical sketches. Only enough of the facts of an 
author's life are given to make students interested in him as a 
personality, and to show how his environment affected his 
work. The author's productions, their relation to the age, and 
the reasons why they hold a position in literature, receive 
treatment commensurate with their importance. 

One of the most striking features of the work consists in 
the way in which literary movements are clearly outlined at 
the beginning of each of the chapters. Special attention is 
given to the essential qualities which differentiate one period 
from another, and to the animating spirit of each age. 

At the end of each chapter a carefully prepared list of 
books is given to direct the: student in studying the original 
works of the authors treated. He is told not only what to 
read, but also where to find it at the least cost. 



Copies will be sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. go) 



Text-Books in Grammar for 
Advanced Grades 



BASKERVILL AND SEWELL'S ENGLISH GRAMMAR 

90 cents 

An advanced grammar for use in High School, Academy, 
and College classes. It combines in a remarkable degree a 
clear and concise statement of the facts of the language, 
based on its reputable use in literature, with rational methods 
of teaching and applying the same. 

LYTE'S ADVANCED GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION 

75 cents 

For use in High Schools, Normal Schools, and other Pre- 
paratory Schools. Based on the author's popular " Grammar 
and Composition" and embodying the improvements sug- 
gested by successful class room work. 

MAXWELL'S ADVANCED LESSONS IN ENGLISH 

GRAMMAR 60 cents 

For use in Higher Grammar Grades and High Schools. 
It embraces all the theory and practice necessary during the 
last two years of a grammar school course or throughout a 
high school course. It is intended to serve first, as a text-book, 
and second, as a book of reference. 

POWELL AND CONNOLLY'S RATIONAL GRAM- 

MAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . . 60 cents 

This new grammar differs widely in treatment and termi- 
nology from other text-books in English. The subject is 
developed logically, and every point is made simple and clear. 
The practical side of the study — the correct use of language 
in speech and writing — is especially emphasized. 



Copies sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price, 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S.83) 



An Introduction to the 

Study of American Literature 

By BRANDER MATTHEWS 
Professor of Literature in Columbia University 

Cloth, 12mo, 256 pages .... Price $1.00 



A text-book of literature on an original plan, and conform- 
ing with the best methods of teaching. 

Admirably designed to guide, to supplement, and to stimu- 
late the student's reading of American authors. 

Illustrated with a fine collection of facsimile manuscripts, 
portraits of authors, and views of their homes and birthplaces. 

Bright, clear, and fascinating, it is itself a literary work of 
high rank. 

The book consists mostly of delightfully readable and yet 
comprehensive little biographies of the fifteen greatest and 
most representative American writers. Each of the sketches 
contains a critical estimate of the author and his works, which 
is the more valuable coming, as it does, from one who is 
himself a master. The work is rounded out by four general 
chapters which take up other prominent authors and discuss 
the history and conditions of our literature as a whole. The 
book also contains a complete chronology of the best American 
literature from the beginning down to the present period. 

Each of the fifteen biographical sketches is illustrated by 
a fine portrait of its subject and views of his birthplace or 
residence and in some cases of both. They are also accom- 
panied by each author's facsimile manuscript covering one or 
two pages. The book contains excellent portraits of many 
other authors famous in American literature. 



Copies sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. 91) 



Webster's School Dictionaries 

REVISED EDITIONS 



WEBSTER'S SCHOOL DICTIONARIES in their revised 
form constitute a progressive series, carefully graded and 
especially adapted for Primary Schools, Common Schools, 
High Schools, Academies, and private students. These 
Dictionaries have all been thoroughly revised, entirely reset, 
and made to conform in all essential respects to Webster's 
International Dictionary. 

WEBSTER'S PRIMARY SCHOOL DICTIONARY . . $0.48 
Containing over 20,000 words and meanings, with over 
400 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S COMMON SCHOOL DICTIONARY . $0.72 
Containing over 25,000 words and meanings, with over 

500 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S HIGH SCHOOL DICTIONARY _ . . $0.98 
Containing about 37,000 words and definitions, with over 

800 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S ACADEMIC DICTIONARY 

Cloth, $1.50; Indexed . $1.80 

The Same . . Half Calf, $2.75, Indexed, 3.00 

Abridged directly from the International Dictionary, and 

giving the orthography, pronunciations, definitions, and 

synonyms of the large vocabulary of words in common use, 

with over 800 illustrations. 

SPECIAL EDITIONS 

Webster's Countinghouse Dictionary. Sheep, Indexed, $2.40 
Webster's Condensed Dictionary 

Cloth, $1.44; Indexed . 1.75 

The Same . . Half Calf, $2.75 ; Indexed, 3.00 
Webster's Handy Dictionary ... 
Webster's Pocket Dictionary. Cloth 

The Same. Roan Flexible 

The Same. Roan Tucks 

The Same. Morocco, Indexed . 
Webster's American People's Dictionary and Manual .48 
Webster's Practical Dictionary 80 



15 
.57 
.69 
.78 
.90 



Copies senty prepaid , on receipt of price, 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. 104) 



HISTORIES FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 

ESSENTIALS IN ANCIENT 
HISTORY 

Half Leather, 528 Pages. Price, $1.50 
By ARTHUR MAYER WOLFSON, Ph.D. 

Assistant in History^ De Witt Clinton High School^ New York City 

In Consultation with 

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL*a 

Professor of History^ Harvard University 



THIS convenient manual presents the essentials in ancient 
history as a unit in a manner both comprehensible and 
interesting to first-year students in secondary schools. It is 
prepared on the plan recommended by the Committee of 
Seven, and at the same time meets every requirement of the 
Regents of the State of New York. It combines in one 
volume Greek and Roman history with that of the Eastern 
nations, and pays more attention to civilization than to mere 
constitutional development. 

The paragraph headings are given in the margins, thus 
making the text continuous and easy to read. At the end of 
each chapter are lists of topics for further research, bibli- 
ographies of parallel reading, and references to both ancient 
and modern authorities. A special feature is the giving of a 
brief list of selected books, not exceeding $25 in cost, and 
suitable for a school library. The numerous maps show only 
the places mentioned in the text, thus avoiding confusion from 
too much detail. The illustrations, although attractive, have 
been chosen primarily with the purpose of accurately explain- 
ing the text. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, Publishers 

(S. 137) 



A Modern Chemlstfy 

ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY 

$1.10 

LABORATORY MANVAL 

50c. 



By F. W. CLARKE 

Chief Chemist of the United 
States Geological Survey 

and L. M. DENNIS 

Professor of Inorganic and Analytical 
Chemistry in Cornell University 

THE study of chemistry, apart from its scientific and 
detailed applications, is a training in the interpretation 
of evidence, and herein lies one of its chief merits as an in- 
strument of education. The authors of this Elementary 
Chemistry have had this idea constantly in mind: theory and 
practice, thought and application, are logically kept together, 
and each generalization follows the evidence upon which it 
rests. The application of the science to human affairs, and 
its utility in modern life, are given their proper treatment. 

The Laboratory Manual contains directions for experiments 
illustrating all the points taken up, and prepared with refer- 
ence to the recommendations of the Committee of Ten and the 
College Entrance Examination Board. Each alternate page 
is left blank for recording the details of the experiment, and 
for writing answers to suggestive questions which are intro- 
duced in connection with the work. 

The books reflect the combined knowledge and experience 
of their distinguished authors, and are equally suited to the 
needs both of those students who intend to take a more ad- 
vanced course in chemical training, and of those who have no 
thought of pursuing the study further. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

Publishers 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 

(S. 162) 



ANDERSON'S STUDY OF 
ENGLISH WORDS 



PRICE, 40 CENTS 



THE PURPOSE of this book is to furnish, in 
a form suitable for school or private study, a 
summary of the most important facts of the 
English language, with especial reference to the 
growth and change of English words. It is based 
upon such standard authorities as Trench, White, 
Skeat, Whitney, and Emerson, and embodies the 
most recent and authoritative results of philo- 
logical study. 

THE PLAN of the book is simple, and the 
study is made interesting and attractive, as well 
as instructive. The work includes a brief treat- 
ment of the general principles of language growth 
as exemplified in the Indo-European languages, 
and a study of the different elements of English, 
showing the growth of our language from its 
original Germanic, French, Latin, Greek and 
other roots into a nev/ language of greater strength 
and universality than any of its predecessors. 

AS A TEXT-BOOK it is intended as a step- 
ping-stone from grammar to rhetoric and the 
history of the English language. It covers the 
work in English etymology required by the 
Regents of the University of the State of New 
York and by leading colleges. Besides its use as 
a fitting book for college entrance examinations, 
it will be found useful to students and readers in 
general. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

[S. 37l 



Text-Books in Natural History 

By JAMES G. NEEDHAM, M.S. 

Instructor in Zoology, Knox College, Galesburg, III. 



NEEDHAM'S ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ZOOLOGY 

90 cents 

A guide in studying animal life in field and laboratory 
adapted for use in High Schools, Academies, Normal Schools, 
etc. It has been prepared to meet the widely recognized 
demand for a text-book in this department of Natural His- 
tory which should be brief in compass, accurate in statement, 
and scientific in treatment. 

Some of the leading features of the book are: the selection 
of types for study that are common and easily accessible ; the 
clear and ample directions given for collecting material for 
study ; the means suggested for studying animal life ; the 
microscopic study of the simpler animal types ; the adaptation 
of the book to the use of schools with little material 
equipment; the natural and easily comprehensible method of 
classification, and their morphology, physiology, and natural 
development. 

NEEDHAM'S OUTDOOR STUDIES ... 40 cents 
This little book is intended to supply a series of lessons in 
Nature Study suitable for pupils in the Intermediate or 
Grammar Grades. Designed for pupils of some years of 
experience and some previous training in observation, these 
lessons are given as guides to close and continued observation, 
and for the educative value of the phenomena of nature which 
they describe. 



Copies sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. 166) 



Boiai\y all the Year Roviivd 

By E. F. ANDR.EWS 

HIGH SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, GA. 

Cloth, I2m0y J02 pp.y with illustrations. Price, $i.00 

IT is the aim of this book to show that botany can 
be taught to good advantage by means within the 
reach of every one. Although adapted for use in 
any secondary school, it is designed more especially 
for those which have no elaborate and expensive labo- 
ratory, but which have easily available a sufficient 
amount of botanical material. It is therefore particu- 
larly suited to country schools. 

The language of the text is very simple and direct. 
Botanical terms are introduced only as required. The 
pupil is led to make accurate observations, and from 
them to deduce safe conclusions. He is first taught 
to observe the conditions of plant life, then the essen- 
tial organs of the plant are taken up, and finally the 
author treats of plants as they relate to their surround- 
ings — ecology. 

The subject is treated in a manner both practical 
and scientific, and by leading the pupil to nature for the 
objects of each lesson it takes up each topic at just the 
time of the year when material for it is most abundant. 
In this way the study can be carried on all the year 
round. The leaf has been selected as the starting 
point, and prominence is given to the more familiar 
forms of vegetation presented by the seed-bearing 
plants, in this way proceeding from the familiar and 
well-known to the more primitive and obscure forms. 
The experiments described are simple, requiring only 
such appliances as the teacher and pupil can easily de- 
vise. Practical questions are given at the end of each 
section with a view to bringing out the relations more 
clearly and to teaching the pupil to reason for himself. 

AMER.ICAN BOOK COMPANY 

(S. .75) 



A New Astronomy 

By DAVID P. TODD, M.A., Ph.D. 

Professorof Astronomy and Director of the Observatory, Amherst College 

Cloth, 12mo, 480 pages. Illustrated. Price $1.30 



This book is designed for classes pursuing the study of 
Astronomy in High Schools, Academies, and Colleges. The 
author's long experience as a director in astronomical observ- 
atories and in teaching the subject has given him unusual 
qualifications and advantages for preparing an ideal text-book. 

The noteworthy feature which distinguishes this from other 
text-books on Astronomy is the practical way in which the 
subjects treated are reenforced by laboratory experiments 
and methods. In this the author follows the principle that 
Astronomy is preeminently a science of observation and 
should be so taught. 

By placing more importance on the physical than on the 
mathematical facts of Astronomy the author has made every 
page of the book deeply interesting to the student and the 
general reader. The treatment of the planets and other 
heavenly bodies and of the law of universal gravitation is 
unusually full, clear, and illuminative. The marvelous dis- 
coveries of Astronomy in recent years, and the latest advances 
in methods of teaching the science, are all represented. 

The illustrations are an important feature of the book. 
Many of them are so ingeniously devised that they explain at 
a glance what pages of mere description could not make clear. 



Copies sent, prepaid^ on receipt of the price, 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. i8i) 



Birds of the United States 

A Manual for the Identification of Species East of 
the Rocky Mountains 

By AUSTIN C. APGAR 

Author of " Trees of the Northern United States," etc. 
Cloth, 12mo, 415 pages. Illustrated. . . . $2.00 



The object of this book is to encourage the study of Birds 
by making it a pleasant and easy task. The treatment, while 
thoroughly scientific and accurate, is interesting and popular 
in form, and attractive to the reader or student. It covers the 
following divisions and subjects: 

Part I. A general description of Birds and an explana- 
tion of the technical terms used by ornithologists. 
Part II. Classification and description of each species, 

with Key. 
Part III. The study of Birds in the field, with Key for 

their identification. 
Part IV. Preparation of Bird specimens. 
The descriptions of the several species have been prepared 
with great care and present several advantages over those in 
other books. They are short and so plainly expressed that 
they may be recalled readily while looking at the bird. The 
book is copiously embellished with illustrations drawn espe- 
cially for this work. 



Copies will be sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(S. 168) 




A Descriptive CatdLlo^ue of High 
School and College Text-Books 



|E issue a complete descriptive catalogue / 
of our text-books for secondary schools 
and higher institutions, illustrated with 
authors' portraits. For the convenience 
of teachers, separate sections are published, de- 
voted to the newest and best books in the following 
branches of study; 

BJ^GLISH 

MA THEM A. TICS 

HISTO'Ry' and TOLITICAL SrCIBJVCB 

SCIBJ^CB 

MO'DB'RJ^ LAJVGl/AGBS^ 

AJ^CIBJVT LAJ^GX/AGBSr 

THIl.OSOVHy and BT>\/CATIOJ^ 

If you are interested in any of these branches, 
we shall be very glad to send you on request the 
catalogue sections which you may wish to see. 
Address the nearest office of the Company. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

TublUhers of School and College Tejct-'BooK^ 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 
Boston AtlaLrvtat DslIIslS Sa^rv FroLnicisco 

(3. 312.) 



(^ 

V 

^ 

^ 



i 



JUN 2 1904 



a^> 



